Pakistan International Airlines Flight 268 was an

Airbus A300 The Airbus A300 is Airbus' first production aircraft and the world's first Twinjet, twin-engine, double-aisle Wide-body aircraft, (wide-body) airliner. It was developed by ''Airbus Industrie GIE'', now merged into Airbus SE, and manufactured f ...

, registration which crashed while approaching

Kathmandu Kathmandu () is the capital and largest city of Nepal, situated in the central part of the country within the Kathmandu Valley. As per the 2021 Nepal census, it has a population of 845,767 residing in 105,649 households, with approximately 4 mi ...

Tribhuvan International Airport Tribhuvan International Airport (, , colloquially referred to as TIA) is an international airport located in Kathmandu, Bagmati, Nepal. It has a tabletop runway, a domestic terminal and an international terminal. As the country's main internat ...

on 28 September 1992. All 167 people on board were killed. Flight 268 is the worst accident in the history of

Pakistan International Airlines Pakistan International Airlines, commonly known as PIA, is the flag carrier of Pakistan. With its primary hub at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, the airline also operates from its secondary hubs at Allama Iqbal International Airport ...

, and the worst ever to occur in

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

Background

Aircraft

The aircraft involved was a 16-year-old Airbus A300B4-103

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as AP-BCP with

serial number A serial number (SN) is a unique identifier used to ''uniquely'' identify an item, and is usually assigned incrementally or sequentially. Despite being called serial "numbers", they do not need to be strictly numerical and may contain letters ...

025. The aircraft was built in 1976. The aircraft had a total of 39,045 flying hours and 19,172 flight cycles at the time of the accident.

Crew

The 49-year-old

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

Iftikhar Janjua had logged 13,192 flight hours, including 6,260 hours on the Airbus A300. The 38-year-old First Officer Hassan Akhtar had 5,849 flight hours, with 1,469 of them on the Airbus A300. Two flight engineers were on board: one operating and the other observing. The 40-year-old unnamed operating flight engineer had 5,289 flight hours, with 2,516 of them on the Airbus A300. The 42-year-old observing flight engineer Muhammad Ashraf had 8,220 flight hours, including 4,503 hours on the Airbus A300.

Accident

Flight 268 departed

Karachi Karachi is the capital city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, province of Sindh, Pakistan. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, largest city in Pakistan and 12th List of largest cities, largest in the world, with a popul ...

at 11:13 AM

Pakistan Standard Time Pakistan Standard Time (, abbreviated as PKT) is UTC+05:00 hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The time zone is in use during standard time in Asia. History Present day Pakistan had been following UTC+05:30 since 1907 (during the Britis ...

for

. Upon contacting Nepalese

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled air ...

, the aircraft was cleared for an approach from the south called the ''Sierra approach''. An aircraft cleared to use this approach was at the time directed to pass over a reporting point called "Romeo" located 41 nautical miles (76 km) south of the Kathmandu VOR (or at ''41 DME'') at an altitude of 15,000 feet. The aircraft was to then descend in seven steps to 5,800 feet, passing over a reporting point known as "Sierra" located at 10 DME at an altitude of 9,500 feet, before landing at Kathmandu. This approach allowed aircraft to pass over the

Mahabharat Range The Lower Himalayan Range, also called the Lesser Himalayas and Mahabharat Lekh or Himachal, is one of the four parallel sub-ranges of the Himalayas. It has the Great Himalayas to the north and the Sivalik Hills to the south. It extends from th ...

directly south of Kathmandu (the crest of which is located just north of the Sierra reporting point) at a safe altitude. Shortly after reporting at 10 DME, at 2.30 pm the aircraft crashed at approximately into the side of the 8,250 ft (2,524 m) mountain at Bhattedanda, disintegrating on impact, instantly killing all on board; the tail fin separated and fell into the forest at the base of the mountainside. This accident occurred 59 days after

Thai Airways International Flight 311 Thai Airways International Flight 311 (TG311/THA311) was a flight from Bangkok, Thailand's Don Mueang International Airport to Kathmandu, Nepal's Tribhuvan International Airport. On July 31, 1992, at 07:00:26 UTC (12:45:26 NST; 14:00:26 ICT), t ...

crashed north of Kathmandu.

Victims

Investigation and causes

After the accident, the Nepali Military assisted with investigators to find the aircraft's

black box In science, computing, and engineering, a black box is a system which can be viewed in terms of its inputs and outputs (or transfer characteristics), without any knowledge of its internal workings. Its implementation is "opaque" (black). The te ...

. The investigation was handled by Andrew Robinson from the Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB). The black box was initially sent to Paris for decoding. At the time of impact, eye witnesses near the accident site confirmed that there was little to no wind or rain and no thunderstorms in the area. Investigators found no technical problems documented for the A300 and, after considering it as a cause, subsequently ruled out terrorism. Although no pertinent flight deck conversation was recovered from Flight 268's

cockpit voice recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...

by investigators with the

Transportation Safety Board of Canada The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB, ), officially the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board () is the agency of the Government of Canada responsible for advancing transportation safety in Canada. It is acc ...

(TSB), which assisted with the investigation, data recovered from the

flight data recorder A flight recorder is an electronic recording device placed in an aircraft for the purpose of facilitating the investigation of aviation accidents and incidents. The device may often be referred to colloquially as a "black box", an outdated nam ...

by the TSB showed that the aircraft initiated each step of its descent one step too early. At 16 DME the aircraft was a full 1,000 feet below its cleared altitude; at 10 DME (the Sierra reporting point) it was 1,300 feet below its cleared altitude. The aircraft approached the Mahabharat Range at an insufficient altitude and crashed into the south slope. Although the pilots of Flight 268 reported their aircraft's altitude accurately to

, controllers did nothing to warn them of their inappropriate altitude because of a lack of radar. Investigators determined that the accident had been caused mainly by pilot error. Visibility was poor due to overcast conditions and the

ground proximity warning system A Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) is a system designed to alert pilots if their aircraft is in immediate danger of flying into the ground or an obstacle. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) defines GPWS as a type of ...

would not have been triggered in time because of the steep terrain. The

approach plate Approach may refer to: Aviation *Visual approach *Instrument approach *Final approach (aeronautics), Final approach Music * Approach (album), ''Approach'' (album), by Von Hertzen Brothers * ''The Approach'', an album by I:Scintilla Other uses *A ...

s for Kathmandu issued to PIA pilots were also determined to be unclear, and Nepalese air traffic controllers were judged timid and reluctant to intervene in what they saw as piloting matters such as terrain separation. The report recommended that

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international sch ...

review navigational charts and encourage their standardisation, and that the approach to Kathmandu Airport be changed to be less complex.

Memorials

PIA paid for the Lele PIA Memorial Park at Lele, at the foot of a mountain about 10 km north of the accident site. In 2012 they ceased paying for the maintenance of the site, the funding of which was then left to relatives of the victims of the accident. In 2023 the local district council took responsibility for the preservation and development of the site. An organisation named Rupak Memorial Foundation was formed in Nepal to tribute

Nepal national football team The Nepal national football team () represents Nepal in FIFA, International men's association football, football, and is governed by the All Nepal Football Association (ANFA). A member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), the Nepali footba ...

former captain and

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

referee Rupak Raj Sharma who was among the victims along with the other passengers. Sharma acted as the head referee of the match between Pakistani club Wohaib and

Club Valencia Club Valencia is a Republic of the Maldives, Maldivian professional football (soccer), football club based in Malé. Nicknamed ''The Sunrisers'', the club most recently competed in the Dhivehi Premier League, the top tier of Football in Maldives ...

from

Maldives The Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, and historically known as the Maldive Islands, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in South Asia located in the Indian Ocean. The Maldives is southwest of Sri Lanka and India, abou ...

in the return leg of the 1992–93 Asian Club Championship held at the Railway Stadium in

Lahore Lahore ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, second-largest city in Pakistan, after Karachi, and ...

on 27 September 1992. The next day, on the way home from Pakistan after the match, Sharma died along with the other three assistant referees of the match, Shyam Shrestha, Roshan Kumar Shrestha and Hira Ratna Bajracharya. The Wilkins Memorial Trust, a UK charitable organisation that provides aid to Nepal, was established in memory of a family killed in the accident.

In popular culture

The accident is featured in the first episode of Season 20 of ''

Mayday Mayday is an emergency procedure word used internationally as a distress signal in voice-procedure radio communications. It is used to signal a life-threatening emergency primarily by aviators and mariners, but in some countries local organiz ...

,'' also known as ''Air Crash Investigation.'' The episode is titled "Kathmandu Descent".