The loss of Yeti Airlines Flight 691 on January 15, 2023 is one of those accidents that forces operators and regulators to look past the headlines about mountains and bad weather and focus on the last few minutes of cockpit work. On paper the flight looked routine. The ATR 72 was on a short domestic hop from Kathmandu to the newly opened Pokhara International Airport and the approach was being flown visually in daylight conditions. But routine flights in Nepal are not the same as routine flights anywhere else. The terrain compresses available margins and small deviations can become unforgiving very quickly.
By mid January investigators had recovered both the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Those recorders are always the shortest route to understanding what pilots did and what the airplane actually did. The presence of recorders does not guarantee a quick answer, but they allow investigators to move from conjecture to sequence of events with timestamps.
Early reporting and the preliminary investigation raised two operational issues that deserve attention from pilots and safety managers. First, Pokhara International Airport had only recently opened and some of the instrument aids were not yet available for use. At the time of the accident the ILS was not operational for the field which meant crews were relying on visual procedures and local traffic patterns in an environment that puts a premium on precise aircraft handling and clear crew coordination. That lack of an available ILS changed the nature of the approach from an instrument stabilized procedure to a visual maneuvering task with less margin for error.
Second, the preliminary documentation released by investigators indicated that propeller pitch and engine power indications were central to what went wrong in the aircraft’s final moments. Data in the initial report show both propellers were in a feathered condition just prior to the sudden descent. Feathering stops the propellers from producing thrust and on a twin turboprop that is catastrophic if it happens unintentionally at low speed and low altitude. That recorded condition requires us to look at cockpit configuration, checklist discipline and the human interface with the power and flap controls.
From an operational point of view a few elements make this scenario especially dangerous. A visual approach into a new airport frequently involves nonstandard circuits or tighter turning geometries to align with the runway. Those maneuvers increase pilot workload and pull attention outside the cockpit at the precise time the crew must complete configuration items such as flaps, power settings, and visual stabilization checks. If a monitoring pilot or instructor is also handling familiarization duties the standard division of tasks can become blurred. The preliminary materials released by the investigation note that an instructor was present for a familiarization flight while a less experienced line captain was acting as pilot flying. That combination increases the importance of strict sterile cockpit discipline and unambiguous callouts during configuration changes.
Weather and visibility in the moments before the accident were widely reported as good, and eyewitness and passenger video suggested a rapid roll and nose down after a period of normal flight path management. That makes a mechanical failure less likely at first glance and points investigators toward human factors and procedural issues as driving contributors. In other words, the airplane did not disappear into clouds and hit terrain; something happened in the cockpit while the flight was being positioned visually.
That combination of factors points to several operational takeaways for pilots flying in confined terrain. First, insist on stabilized approach criteria. If the approach requires visual maneuvering close to terrain and the flight cannot meet stabilization checks by the published altitude, execute a go around. Second, be conservative with runway and approach selection when equipment such as an ILS is not available. Third, maintain strict sterile cockpit procedures during the critical stages of flight and ensure task sharing is explicit when a training element is introduced into revenue flights. Finally, brief who will call what and what each callout means when configuration handles are similar in feel or location. Those are practical crew resource management fixes that reduce the chance of a simple control input having catastrophic consequences.
For operators and regulators the accident exposes pressure points that are not unique to Nepal. New airport openings require operational readiness that goes beyond pavement and navigation beacons. Published and approved procedures, crew training for nonstandard circuits, and ensuring key aids are commissioned before scheduled passenger operations should be part of the opening sequence. From a regulatory perspective, oversight of airline training programs and operational risk assessments is as important as infrastructure. Where fields are surrounded by rising terrain, standard operating procedures must anticipate the increased likelihood of go arounds and training events should not be mixed with revenue flights without strict controls.
This accident is still under formal investigation. The black boxes provide a path to a factual sequence and the preliminary materials available in mid February focus attention on propeller configuration and crew actions during a high workload visual approach. Those findings should not be read as a final cause but they do shift our focus away from weather or the mere presence of high terrain and toward how pilots manage configuration, workload, and distractions in the critical minutes before landing. For pilots operating in any demanding environment the lesson is straightforward. Control your tasks, control your configuration, and do not let a familiarization or training task dilute the sterile discipline required when terrain leaves no room for error.