Anju Khatiwada had a young son and a dead husband when she decided to step into a cockpit for the first time.
In June 2006, Dipak Pokhrel, a co-pilot for Yeti Airlines, died along with eight other people when his plane crashed while carrying rice and food to Jumla, Nepal. Anju did not turn away from aviation: she trained, became certified as a pilot, and ended up flying for the same airline that had taken her husband from her. She accumulated nearly 6,400 flight hours and became one of the few female pilots at Yeti Airlines.
On January 15, 2023, sixteen years after that first accident, Anju was serving as co-pilot on Flight 691 when the aircraft fell into a ravine near Pokhara. All 72 people on board died, in the worst air disaster Nepal has experienced in decades. The same airline, the same tragedy repeated, twice in the same family.
