Kathmandu : A passenger plane carrying 19 people crashed during takeoff in Kathmandu on Wednesday, leaving 18 dead and only the pilot surviving, police in the Nepali capital told .

The plane belongs to the domestic Saurya airline and was en route to the resort town of Pokhara, an important tourism hub in the Himalayan republic. It crashed at around 11:00 am, with police and firefighters engaged in rescue efforts.

The Saurya Airlines flight was carrying a two-member crew and 17 of the company’s staff members for a test flight, Nepali police spokesman Dan Bahadur Karki told  .

Police official Basanta Rajauri said authorities have pulled out all 18 bodies. The only survivor was the pilot, who was taken to Kathmandu Medical College Hospital for treatment, said a doctor at the hospital who was not authorised to speak to media. The pilot has injuries to the eyes but is not in any danger, the doctor said, reported News agency AP.

AP also reported that the bodies have been taken to the T.U. Teaching Hospital in Kathmandu for autopsy. The airline manifest showed there were two pilots and 17 passengers on board, among them there was only one female. The crew and 16 passengers were Nepali nationals with one identified as foreigner but no nationality was disclosed.

Images of the aftermath shared by Nepal’s military showed the plane’s fuselage split apart and burnt to a husk. Around a dozen soldiers in camouflage were standing on top of the wreckage, with the surrounding earth coated in fire retardant.

The plane crashed at around 11:15 am (0530 GMT), the military said in a statement, adding that the army’s quick response team had been lending assistance with rescue efforts. News portal Khabarhub reported that the airplane had caught fire after skidding on the runway.

The plane was scheduled to fly on Nepal’s most-trafficked air route between Kathmandu and Pokhara, an important tourism hub in the Himalayan republic. Saurya Airlines exclusively flies Bombardier CRJ 200 jets, according to its website.

Nepal’s air industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people between hard-to-reach areas as well as foreign trekkers and climbers. But it has been plagued by poor safety due to insufficient training and maintenance—issues compounded by the mountainous republic’s treacherous geography.

Notably, the European Union has banned all Nepali carriers from its airspace over safety concerns. The Himalayan country has some of the world’s trickiest runways to land on, flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that pose a challenge even for accomplished pilots.

The weather can also change quickly in the mountains, creating treacherous flying conditions.  Nepal’s last major commercial flight accident was in January 2023, when a Yeti Airlines service crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing all 72 aboard.

That accident was Nepal’s deadliest since 1992, when all 167 people aboard a Pakistan International Airlines plane died when it crashed on approach to Kathmandu airport. Earlier that year, a Thai Airways aircraft had crashed near the same airport, killing 113 people.