Yeti Airlines Flight 691
ATR 72-500 · Crashed during approach due to accidental feathering of propellers and pilot error
From Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM) to Pokhara International Airport (PHH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DCA23WA174
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- Event fatalities
- 72 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 72
- 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
- Airline
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
ATR 72-500
- Flight
- YT691
- Aircraft type
- ATR 72
- 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-ANC
- Operator
- Yeti Airlines
- Onboard fatalities
- 72
- Route
- From Tribhuvan International Airport (KTM)To Pokhara International Airport (PHH)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 › Task performance
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
- Personnel issues › Miscellaneous
- Organizational issues › Support/oversight/monitoring
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
Yeti Airlines Flight 691 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight flown by Yeti Airlines from Kathmandu to Pokhara in Nepal. On 15 January 2023, the ATR 72 being operated on the route stalled and crashed while landing at Pokhara, killing all 68 passengers and 4 crew members on board. The investigation revealed that Captain Kamal KC had accidentally feathered the engines, causing a loss of thrust.
Accident
The flight took off from Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport at 10:33 am NST. It crashed on the bank of the Seti Gandaki River while on final approach to landing at Pokhara International Airport. A video filmed from the ground showed the aircraft banking steeply to the left before crashing 65 m away. Another video of the crash was streamed live on Facebook from inside the plane by a passenger, Sonu Jaiswal, showing that the passengers were unaware of the situation until seconds before impact.
The crash occurred in Gandaki Province between the old Pokhara Airport and the new Pokhara International Airport, which was opened two weeks earlier and also where the aircraft was intending to land. The accident resulted in the deaths of all 72 people on board, and was Nepal's worst aviation accident since the crash of Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 in 1992, the deadliest aviation accident in Nepalese domestic aviation, and the deadliest accident involving an ATR 72.
According to an official at the Pokhara International Airport, air traffic control cleared the flight to land on runway 30 heading from east to west, but the captain requested the opposing runway 12 heading from west to east, minutes before the crash. Flight-tracking service Flightradar24 noted that during the flight the aircraft had been transmitting inaccurate speed and altitude data.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
Experts noted that the video from the ground taken moments before the crash showed the aircraft's nose noticeably high before the left wing suddenly dropped, probably indicating a stall. Hours after the crash, a five-member committee headed by Nagendra Ghimire was set up to investigate the accident in conjunction with the French Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety.
On 16 January, the flight data and cockpit voice recorders were found; the recorders were examined in Singapore and with assistance from Transportation Safety Board of Canada, Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety, and Transport Safety Investigation Bureau of Singapore.
Final report
On 28 December 2023, the final report was released. It reiterated the preliminary findings that the accidental change of position of both condition levers to the feathered position resulted in the loss of thrust, leading to the aerodynamic stall and crash. It found that neither airline nor regulator had approved the approach circuit chart being used, so that the recommendations of the regulator's Safety Risk Management team had not been put into effect. Some other contributing factors were also found, mostly human errors due to a high workload, lack of appropriate technical and skill-based training, ineffective crew resource management (CRM), lack of sterile cockpit discipline, and non-compliance with standard operating procedures (SOP).
Text from the Wikipedia article “Yeti Airlines Flight 691” (revision 1366970590, 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: Yeti Airlines Flight 691
- Article
- Yeti Airlines Flight 691
- Revision
- 1366970590 · 2026-07-31 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q116205343
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record DCA23WA174
- Event ID
- 20230216106741
- Case number
- DCA23WA174
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "Yeti Airlines Flight 691" (page 72755161, revision 1366970590); merged with NTSB case DCA23WA174 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- 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 DCA23WA174
- Operation
- airline flight number in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- Wikipedia: not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (2)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "Yeti Airlines Flight 691" and NTSB case DCA23WA174, 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.