Tara Air Flight 193
Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter · VFR into IMC, loss of situational awareness, CFIT
From Pokhara Domestic Airport (PKR) to Jomsom Airport (JMO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG16WA018
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Final · Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission final report, 31 Jul 2016
- Event fatalities
- 23 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- Occupants
- 23
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 0 serious · 0 minor (NTSB)
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Unknown
Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter
- Flight
- TB193
- Aircraft type
- Viking AIR DHC-6-400 TWIN OTTER
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- 9N-AHH
- Operator
- Tara Air
- Onboard fatalities
- 23
- Route
- From Pokhara Domestic Airport (PKR)To Jomsom Airport (JMO)
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2015)
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 129: Foreign
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- En route · cruise
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
From the investigation findings the Wikipedia article reports, sorted into the NTSB's cause areas with AI assistance.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
Tara Air Flight 193 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Pokhara to Jomsom, Nepal. On 24 February 2016, eight minutes after take-off, the aircraft serving the flight, a Viking Air DHC-6-400 Twin Otter went missing with 23 people on board.
Hours later, the wreckage was found near the village of Dana, Myagdi District. There were no survivors. It was Tara Air's deadliest accident.
Flight
The aircraft took off from Pokhara at 7:50 am local time. The normal flight duration on the route is 18 minutes. The control tower officers at Pokhara lost contact with the aircraft 10 minutes after takeoff; the wreckage was found at Tirkhe Dhunga, Dana VDC of Myagdi district at 1:25 pm by a police team deployed from Dana Police Post. Tara Air reported that the weather at both origin and destination airports was favourable.
During the flight, the co-pilot acted as the Pilot Flying and the captain as Pilot Monitoring. En route, the flight deviated to the left and climbed to 12000 ft to avoid clouds. Over the Ghorepani area, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) began to sound. The aircraft was flying through clouds with a little visibility between clouds. A descent to 10000 ft was initiated and at 10200 ft the GPWS sounded again, but the captain responded not to worry about it. The captain was accustomed to hearing GPWS warnings in normal flight, so it became a habit to disregard the warnings. About one minute before the accident the captain took over control and initiated a climb. The aircraft impacted a mountainside at 10700 ft and came to a rest at 10982 ft near Dana village, Myagdi district. Aviation Safety Network gives the probable cause as a loss of situational awareness when entering clouds while flying under Visual Flight Rules (VFR).
Investigation and cause
Investigation
A commission was formed to investigate the crash. The wreckage was found spread about 200 meters (200 m) in Solighopte, Myagdi District, Dhaulagiri Zone.
The final accident report, 17 months later, read: "The Commission concludes that the probable cause of this accident was the fact that despite unfavourable weather conditions, the crew's repeated decision to enter into cloud during VFR flight and their deviation from the normal track due to loss of situational awareness aggravated by spatial disorientation leading to CFIT accident."
Text from the Wikipedia article “Tara Air Flight 193” (revision 1339318240, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: Tara Air Flight 193
- Article
- Tara Air Flight 193
- Revision
- 1339318240 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q22927624
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record ENG16WA018
- Event ID
- 20160401X95257
- Case number
- ENG16WA018
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Tara Air Flight 193" (page 49529365, revision 1339318240); merged with NTSB case ENG16WA018 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date; matches the Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, Government of Nepal (Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) final report
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports); gaps and aircraft details from NTSB record ENG16WA018
- Operation
- Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, Government of Nepal (Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) final report
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities; matches the Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, Government of Nepal (Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) final report
- Ground fatalities
- Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, Government of Nepal (Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) final report
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Tara Air Flight 193" and NTSB case ENG16WA018, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this event outside the United States Wikipedia's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- Checked against the Aircraft Accident Investigation Commission, Government of Nepal (Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation) final report (2016-07-31) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, flight number, fatalities, registration, operator, departure, destination and damage. Taken from the report: ground fatalities and type of operation. Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates and aircraft type.