News Desk

The Advocate Post: The pilot who survived a deadly plane crash in Nepal was saved after his cockpit was sheared off by a freight container seconds before the rest of the aircraft crashed in flames.

The only survivor of the crash that claimed the lives of eighteen people at the Kathmandu airport, Captain Manish Ratna Shakya, is undergoing medical treatment in a hospital, but BBC Nepali has reported he is speaking and able to inform family members that he is “all good.”

When flames approached the cockpit area of the aircraft lodged in the container, rescuers informed the BBC that they had arrived at the injured pilot.

He was having trouble breathing because the air barrier was open. We smashed the window and took him out right away, said Nepal Police Senior Superintendent Dambar Bishwakarma.When we got him, he had bleeding all over his face, but we got him taken to the hospital so he could talk,” he continued.

The aircraft suddenly become right as it got off from the airport and crashed into the east side of the runway, according to Nepal’s Minister of Civil Aviation Badri Pandey.

Video captured by CCTV shows the flaming aircraft streaking over a portion of the airport until it seems to crash into a ravine near the site’s far end.

“It hit the container on the edge of the airport… then, it fell further below,”

stated Mr. Pandey. But the cockpit was still trapped within the container. The captain survived in this way.

The Nepali army made a statement stating that the pilot

“was very scared but had not lost consciousness at that time”

and that he was

“rescue within five minutes of the crash”.

Dr. Meena Thapa, the medical director of the hospital, reports that he sustained facial and head injuries and will shortly have surgery to fix fractured bones in his back.