How Pulling The Wrong Lever Caused Nepal's Worst Crash In 30 Years | Yeti Airlines 691

This is the story of Yeti flight 691. On the 15th of January 2023 the pilots of an ATR 72 tail number 9N-ANC of Yeti Airlines were having a busy morning, they were constantly shuttling the ATR 72 between the airports of Kathmandu and Pokhara. The thing about flight 691 was that it had two captains on board, the pilot in the left hand seat was being familiarised with the pokhara airport. the pilot flying and the pilot in the right hand seat was the pilot monitoring, who was the instructor. Now the thing is that the airport at Pokara was quite new, the old airport was very small and now a new international airport had been built in the vicinity and pilots were still learning all the new procedures for the new airport. So with that on that fateful day, they set off from kathmandu in the ATR 72 with 68 passengers and 4 crew members on board. The plane took off and everything was normal the weather was good, soo good that they were in visual conditions all the way to their destination and nothing appeared to be wrong. As flight 691 got closer to the airport of pokhara they got in touch with air traffic control and dlight 691 was assigned runway 30 for the landing. Now we dont know why but later on in the flight they asked for that to be changed to runway 12. They had already landed on runway 30 earlier on in the day and maybe they wanted to try landing on runway 30 so that the pilot flying could get some experience with both runways. We dont know why they made the change that they did, if you have any idea as to why they made the change that they did then please do let me know in the comments below.

Then at 10:51 am local time the plane was at 6500 feet and they joined the pattern for runway 12 just north of the runway, ATC at this point was able to visually identify the plane and from their point everything looked good. As flight 691 flew the pattern, the pilots slowed the plane down and brought out the flaps to 15 degrees and 46 seconds later they dropped the gear. They were getting this plane ready to land. In the cabin people were excited about the landing with many of them looking out the window eager to capture a view of the city of Pokhara.
At this point the plane was just 721 off of the ground and were on the downwind leg . The pilot flying called out flaps 30 and the pilot monitoring just replied with “flaps 30 continue descent”. This is when the problems started to show up for flight 691, The propeller rotation speed of both engines started to fall and then before you knew it they were less than 25%, we dont know how low they actually went because the flight data recorder does not record values below 25%. At the same time the torque being produced by the engines also fell to 0%. At 10:56 am and 36 seconds, a solitary little chime was heard in the cockpit, this was the master caution chime, but the pilots were just wrapping up the before-landing checklist at the time and didnt really notice the warning. As they made the left turn to get on to the base leg for the approach, that is they were now flying at a 90 degree angle to the runway and they still needed one final turn to line up with the runway , the engines had both gone into flight idle mode. Then in the cockpit the automated call out for 500 feet was made and it was followed up with the sound of a click meaning that someone in the cockpit silenced the master caution warning. The plane was then put into a left turn of 30 degrees, the pilot flying felt that something was wrong, so she asked the pilot monitoring, who was the more experienced pilot in this case if the left turn should be continued, he asked her to keep turning. Once the turn was done the pilot flying felt that things were still not right and asked the pilot monitoring if the approach should be continued. He didn't feel like it should be and asked asked the pilot flying to add more power. But this didnt fix the problem with flight 691. On the ground the controller cleared flight 691 for the landing,