Copilot feared dead in the Nepal plane crash was married to a pilot killed in similar crash 16 years earlier, report says

Rescue teams work to retrieve bodies at the crash site.

Bijay Neupane/Handout via REUTERS

• The copilot of a plane that crashed in Nepal was married to a pilot killed in a crash, per Reuters.
• Anju Khatiwada reportedly paid for her training with the insurance money from her husband's death.
• Khatiwada is feared to be dead but her remains have not been identified, a spokesperson said.

Anju Khatiwada, the copilot of a Yeti Airlines flight that crashed on Sunday, was married to a pilot with the same airline and who was killed in a plane crash 16 years earlier, Reuters reported.

The Sunday crash was the country's deadliest in three decades, leaving at least 68 people dead. The plane crashed near Pokhara airport, per Reuters, and was carrying 72 people. 

Khatiwada is feared to be dead but her remains have not been identified, a Yeti Airlines spokesman, Sudarshan Bartaula, told Reuters.

The body of the flight's captain, Kamal K.C., has been recovered and identified, according to the news agency.

Representatives for Yeti Airlines did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment. Khatiwada's family could not immediately be reached. 

The spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that Khatiwada's husband, Dipak Pokhrel, died in 2006 when a Yeti Airlines passenger plane crashed in Jumla.

"She got her pilot training with the money she got from the insurance after her husband's death," Bartaula told Reuters.

Khatiwada joined the airline in 2010, four years after her husband died when the plane he was flying crashed shortly before landing, per Reuters.

Before Sunday's crash, 273 people had died in air crashes in the country since 2000, according to a Reuters report. 

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