Darjeeling: Bharat Sharma, the owner of Kathmandu-based Spiritual Travels, was at the Tribhuvan International Airport when the Bangladesh airliner crashed on Monday.

Sharma narrated the following account over the phone:

I had gone to the airport this afternoon to receive a guest who was coming from Bangalore via Delhi. I was at the arrival lounge, standing near a tea parlour and was waiting for my guest whose plane had already landed. Everything was normal and the airport was bustling with people.

I think an Indian plane had just landed. I was checking the time, and it was 2.17pm (local time) when I heard a huge noise. The entire airport building shook, people started screaming.

I could see a thick blanket of smoke in the sky. There was complete chaos all around, people were screaming. As people ran with their bags, some fell. I too started running direction-less. I could see from a distance that a plane had careened off the runway, crashed into a nearby field and had caught fire.

Later, I was told that there were 67 passengers in the aircraft and four crew members. There were 15 medical students from Nepal.

Outside, the situation was tense. Ambulances started ferrying the dead and the injured. I tried to help but with entry restricted, there was little I could do.

I felt so helpless. I was thoroughly shaken and after sometime, I drove out of the airport with the loud sound still ringing in my ears.

Calcutta flights

The temporary closure of the Tribhuvan International Airport runway prompted the diversion of two flights to the Calcutta airport, including one that had taken off from the city.

An Air India flight from Calcutta had reached Kathmandu around 2.20pm but could not land. It returned at 3.10pm. The flight with 115 passengers again took off at 6.15pm after the Kathmandu airport reopened, Air India officials said. A Qatar Airways flight from Doha to Kathmandu was diverted to Calcutta at 3.48pm and it took off again for the Nepal capital at 5.35pm.