The pilot of the US-Bangla Airlines plane, crashed in Nepal on Monday, has survived, according to the airliner sources.
The airline’s CEO Imran Asif told the media in Dhaka in the evening that the pilot, Abid Sultan, was alive.
Co-pilot Prithula Rashid, however, died after the plane crashed at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on Monday afternoon, according to Kathmandu Medical College Hospital, reports bdnews24.com.
The 78-seater Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 aircraft took off from Dhaka with 67 passengers and four crew members on board.
It shot off the runway while it was about to crash into a fence of the airport and immediately caught fire around 2:20pm local time.
Doctors at Kathmandu Medical College Hospital said eight have died when the victims had been brought to the hospital.
Prithula, the first officer of the plane, was among the eight. According to his Facebook profile, she had been working at US-Bangla since July 2016.
After graduating from North South University in Dhaka, she studied at the Arirang Flying School.
Rizwan Ahmed Khan, who also works as a first officer at the US-Bangla, said ‘Nabila’ and Khaza Hossain were working as cabin crew of the aircraft.
The list of deceased provided by the hospital features Khaza’s name.
Kamrul Islam, a deputy general manager at the US-Bangla, said the injured were undergoing treatment at the KMCH, OM and Norvic hospitals.
Abid Sultan, a student of Dhaka Residential College, had been a flight lieutenant of Bangladesh Air Force.
One of his friends said Abid was the ‘brightest officer’ of their time and had the experience of flying Mig-21 aircraft.
Abid had flown the plane, 78-seater Bombardier Dash 8 Q400, from Canada to Bangladesh before taking it to Kathmandu.
