{{A plane with 18 people on board has gone missing in western Nepal.}}<\/p>\n
Contact with the Nepal Airlines plane was lost a few minutes after it took off from the town of Pokhara, bound for Jumla, around 360km (220 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, officials said.<\/p>\n
Fifteen passengers – reportedly including a child- and three crew members were on board the aircraft.<\/p>\n
Critics say that many passenger aircraft in Nepal are often poorly maintained.<\/p>\n
The Twin Otter plane went missing shortly after it took off at 12:40 local time (06:55 GMT), Nepal Airlines spokesman Ram Hari Sharma told reporters.<\/p>\n
One of the passengers is believed to be a foreign national.<\/p>\n
{{Poor record}}<\/p>\n
In December the EU put all of Nepal’s airlines on a blacklist, citing safety fears.<\/p>\n
In September 2012, a plane operated by Nepal’s Sita Air crashed near Kathmandu airport, killing 19 people.<\/p>\n
In May of that year 15 people died when an Agni Air plane carrying Indian pilgrims to a Hindu religious site in northern Nepal crashed at a high-altitude airport.<\/p>\n
Since 1949 – the year the first aircraft landed in Nepal – there have been more than 70 different crashes involving planes and helicopters, in which more than 650 people have been killed.<\/p>\n
BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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