US-Bangla plane had no technical glitch: Bangladesh probe body

The US-Bangla Airlines aircraft had no technical glitch before taking off for Kathmandu, the chief of Bangladesh's probe body said today.

The Dhaka to Kathmandu flight, with 67 passengers and four crew members on board, caught fire after it careened off the runway and ploughed into a football ground near the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu on March 12, killing 51 people, in Nepal's worst aviation disaster in more than 25 years.

Captain Salahuddin M Rahmatullah, the chief of Aircraft Accident Investigation Group (AAIG) of Bangladesh -- a high-level probe committee instituted to look into the incident -- refuted the allegation that the plane was old.

He said that an aircraft does not remain old or have glitches in them after its parts are changed, The Daily Star reported.

Rahmatullah, who is leading a team of Bangladeshi investigators in Nepal, made the remark while talking to reporters before leaving for Kathmandu to join the investigation.

Pilot Abid Sultan of US-Bangla flight BS211 was physically fit, he said.

Twenty-eight Bangladeshis, 22 Nepalese, and one Chinese citizen were killed in the deadly crash, the report said.

A joint-team of experts would soon sit to decide where the plane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorders would be decoded, Yagya Prasad Gautam, chief of the probe committee formed by the Nepalese government, was quoted as saying by the report.

A team of investigators from Bangladesh would join the Canadian and Nepalese officials in a day or two, he said.

The Canadian and Nepalese investigators have started collecting information, talking to stakeholders, and analysing CCTV footage linked to the crash, the report said.