Pilot Had ‘Emotional Breakdown’ Before Deadly Crash, Nepal Probe Panel Says

Pilot Had ‘Emotional Breakdown’ Before Deadly Crash, Nepal Probe Panel Says
Rescue workers work at the wreckage of a US-Bangla airplane after it crashed at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, on March 12, 2018. Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters
|Updated:

KATHMANDU—The captain of a Bangladeshi aeroplane “seemed to have an emotional breakdown” before a deadly crash last March, Nepali investigators said in a final report on the Himalayan nation’s worst aviation disaster in 26 years.

They blamed the crew’s loss of situational awareness for the crash of the US-Bangla Airlines flight to the Nepali capital from Dhaka that caught fire on landing in Kathmandu, killing 51 of the 71 people aboard.