The co-pilot in the Nepalese plane crash was the widow of a pilot who died in a plane crash years ago

• Accident One of the passengers records the moment of the fatal plane crash in Nepal

In 2010,

joined Nepal's Yeti Airlines, following in the footsteps of her husband, a pilot who had died in an accident four years earlier when a small passenger plane he was flying for the national carrier crashed minutes before landing. .

On Sunday, Khatiwada, 44, was the co-pilot of a Yeti Airlines flight from Kathmandu that crashed on approach to the city of Pokhara with 72 people on board.

"Her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in a 2006 crash of a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter plane in Jumla," the airline's spokesman, Sudarshan Bartaula, told Sudarshan, referring to Khatiwada.

"She got her pilot training with the money she got from insurance after the death of her husband."

Having overcome multiple obstacles, Anju joined Yeti Airlines.

She was one of six women employed by the airline as pilots and had flown nearly 6,400 hours.

Distraught over her loss, alone with her young son, Anju's grief became her motivating force.

"She was a determined woman who stood up for her dreams and fulfilled her husband's dreams," Santosh Sharma, a family member, told the BBC.

A pilot with more than 6,400 flight hours, Khatiwada had previously flown the popular tourist route from the capital, Kathmandu, to the country's second-largest city, Pokhara, Bartaula said.

The body of Kamal KC, the captain of the flight, which had more than 21,900 flight hours, has been recovered and identified.

Not so the remains of Kathiwada, although she is one of the victims of the accident.

"On Sunday, she was flying the plane with an instructor pilot, which is the airline's standard procedure," said a Yeti Airlines official, who knew Khatiwada personally.

"Khatiwada was always up for any task and had flown to Pokhara before," added the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The ATR-72 plane Khatiwada was co-piloting rocked from side to side before crashing into a gorge near Pokhara airport and catching fire, according to eyewitness accounts and a video of the crash posted on social media.

Delivery of bodies to families

Hospitals in Nepal on Tuesday began handing over to families the bodies of the victims of the plane crash two days earlier, in the worst air tragedy to hit the country in three decades.

All the occupants of the device, including 15 foreigners - five citizens of India, four Russians, two Koreans, one Argentine, one Australian, one Irish and one French - and six children, are dead, according to the authorities.

Rescuers have worked tirelessly since the accident to recover the remains of the victims among the fragments of the device, the fuselage and the charred seats at the bottom of the precipice, about 300 meters deep.

By Tuesday, 70 bodies out of 72 had been recovered, police officer AK Chhetri said.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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