US Bangla Flight 211

You trust a stranger with your life every time you board a plane, but you almost never see the person in the left seat. That uneasy truth sits at the center of our deep dive into US-Bangla Flight 211, a Dhaka to Kathmandu route that should have been routine and instead ended with 51 lives lost after a chaotic, unstable approach and a post-crash fire. 

We walk through the setup: a Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 heading into Kathmandu’s demanding airspace, where terrain, workload, and tight approach geometry punish sloppy execution. Then the human factors take over. The captain arrives sleep-deprived, emotionally unraveled, and angry, and the cockpit voice recording captures a breakdown that collides with sterile cockpit rules, checklist discipline, and basic crew coordination. With a junior first officer on her first Kathmandu approach, cockpit authority gradients and fear of pushback leave critical errors unchallenged as automation settings, headings, and crosswinds pull the flight farther and farther from a safe landing profile. 

From runway confusion to ignored alarms to risky low-altitude maneuvering, the story becomes a blunt lesson in aviation safety culture, mental health screening, and crew resource management. We also unpack the investigation, the early attempts to shift blame, and what accountability looks like years later. If you care about air crash investigation, pilot decision-making, and how systems fail when one person can’t be stopped, this one will stick with you. 

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Special thank you to Lunarfall Audio for producing and doing all the heavy lifting on audio editing since April 13, 2025, the Murder of Christopher Meyer episode https://lunarfallaudio.com/

Transcript

Introducing US-Bangla Flight 211

Crew Background And Risk Factors

Early Signs Of A Meltdown

Ranting In The Cockpit

Approach Setup Starts To Unravel

Navigation Mistakes And Missed Turns

Alarms Ignored And Runway Confusion

Low Passes And Tower Buzzing

Impact Fire And Casualties

Investigation And Accountability

Closing And Listener Callouts

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Quick question. The last time you were on a plane, did you see the pilot before takeoff? Well, I'm not exactly a frequent flyer. I fly maybe once or twice a year. I don't think I've ever seen the pilot. And I'm often not exactly convinced that's a good thing. You are, for all intents and purposes, putting your life in their hands. Maybe you should be given the opportunity to at least see the pilot. You know, size them up, see if you trust them with your life. And now I'm not talking about the race of the pilot or no bullshit like that, because, quite frankly, if you have a problem with the race of the pilot, you're an asshole. I'm talking about their general demeanor. You know, do they look well rested or like they've been out all night drinking? What kind of mood are they in? Are they happy or do they look pissed at the world or like they're holding back tears? And if it's the latter on either of those, do you trust them enough to stay on the plane or get off and reschedule your flight? Like what should have happened on US Bangalore Flight 211, when an obviously pissed off and distraught pilot was allowed to fly and the flight ended in tragedy. So, what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's A Disaster. Tonight we're diving into US Bangalore Flight 211 that ended with the deaths of 51 people. And tonight's episode is brought to you by the Flying Himalayan Sheepdog Association of Nepal. Through generations of selective breeding, a secret order of Buddhist monks hidden deep in the Himalayas have produced a race of super sheepdogs. They can run faster and jump higher than any ordinary rescue dog. They can reach areas previously thought inaccessible and can perform rescues no matter where you're lost in the Himalayas. And now, for the first time ever, the Flying Himalayan Sheepdog Association of Nepal is making these super dogs available to the general public for the low, low price of 10,000 rupees. So get yours today. They'll keep you safe and put a smile on your face when you're feeling down. On March 12, 2018, Flight BS-211 was scheduled to fly from Dhaka, Bangladesh to Kathmandu, Nepal. This was a regularly scheduled flight that goes four times a week between the two cities. However, this would be far from a regular flight. Flight 211 was a Bombardier Q-400, commonly called the Dash-8 turboprop plane. The captain was Abid Sultan, a 52-year-old former Bangladesh Air Force pilot, with 5,500 hours of flight time over his 22 years of flying. And 1700 of those hours were spent flying the Dash 8. He had been with US Bangalore for 3 years and was one of their flight instructors and a Czech pilot for the Dash 8. He was also very familiar with the flight to Camp Mandu since he'd flown it over a hundred times previously. Which is a good thing. The airport in Camp Mandu is in the foothills of the Himalayas and not an easy airport to fly in and out of. The flight typically requires flying in between mountains, which makes radar just about useless, requiring flying by VOR, which is very high frequency omnidirectional range, a short-range ground-based radio navigation system that lets the plane decide where it's at based off of radio pings from ground beacons. In this case, the main beacon at the airport in Kathmandu. Flying with Captain Salton was First Officer Perthula Rashid. At 25 years old, she was the airline's first female pilot. She was hired in 2016 and had just under a total of 400 flight hours, and this would be her first time flying into Kathmandu. Also on board was the two cabin crew members, Kwaza Shafi and Shamin Akhtar, along with 71 passengers, and almost half of them were medical students returning home after finishing up their finals. Now, with such an experienced pilot flying, there shouldn't be any problems. Except for the fact that Captain Salton had a little secret. He was, quote unquote, retired from the Air Force due to mental health problems. He was struggling with depression, and while this got him retired from the Air Force, he was eventually cleared to fly civilian planes, which was mostly due to him repeatedly hiding his past mental health issues from the doctors during annual medical reviews. On top of this, Sultan had been fucking around with one of his trainees. And he was pissed when he found out she had told some co-workers about the affair. He repeatedly denied everything, but the damage was done and he was humiliated. He was humiliated so badly that prior to flight 211, he put in his resignation. But due to contractual obligations and the company's code of conduct, he was still required to work until the airlines discharged him. Which makes sense. Let's make this guy that doesn't want to work here keep on working. That sounds safe. So on the morning of March 12th, a distraught and sleep-deprived Sultan was to fly to Kathmandu. And shit was obviously bad from the start. At 6.40, Ground Control contacted the aircraft and requested its Bangladesh Air Defense Clearance number. They called back with their number of 2177. But the ground controller asked again if they had the ADC for Bangladesh, which annoyed the shit out of Sultan, who contacted his operations to confirm the number. After back and forth for 10 minutes, they finally got everything settled and got the clearance to take off. As they were climbing into the sky, Sultan overheard one of the ground controllers calling US Bangal Flight 287 and asking what the remaining fuel on board was. And for whatever reason, Salton automatically assumed the message was for him. He answered the radio call as if it was for him and snapped at the controller. Now, this is a serious violation of the sterile cockpit rules that ban all non-essential conversation during takeoff and landings. He was highly agitated and stressed as he yelled and threatened to have the controller fired. And how dare they call him? And of course, when they said they weren't even calling him, it just pissed this asshole off even more. After this, everything settles down for a few minutes, but then Sultan decides to start ranting and raving and having a one-sided conversation with Rashid. He's going on and on ranting about Lamia, the trainee he had been having an affair with. He starts to cry and chain-smoke cigarettes as they fly towards Camandu. And he's just going on and on about how what she said just wasn't true. He could have her if he wanted her, but she was fat and she just wasn't worth having, and she's a horrible pilot. He is absolutely losing his shit over the whole ordeal with Lamia, blaming her for his having to resign from the airline in disgrace. An hour into the flight, they establish contact with Cat Manu Control. Captain Sultan is still angry and ranting while Rasheed tries to get him to calm and focus on the upcoming landing. He needs to complete his approach checklist, but he's unprepared and just rushes through the whole thing, skipping over steps and not using his approach charts, which he leaves with Rasheed. And Rashid, unfamiliar with the approach, makes several mistakes that Stalton doesn't catch and just kinda goes with it. 15 minutes later, First Officer Rashid requested descent clearance and was told to descend to 16,000 feet. Minutes later, Cat Mandu called them back and told them to go to 13,000 feet and hold over the guru's waypoint. The approach to the airport is fairly narrow, plus having a single runway and being fairly busy. It's normal to have to fly a holding pattern while waiting to land here. They acknowledged the hold and put it into their flight management system and were prepared to wait the usual 10 minutes or so. However, it'd only be two minutes before they were told to reduce speed and descend before getting clearance to land on runway 02. Not being used to getting cleared so quickly, and also, well kind of being highly distracted, neither pilot turned off the flight management system. So on the way to Gurus, the Sultan drops his cigarette on the ground and makes Rashid look for it while he flies, which adds some confusion to the cockpit. So when they hit the waypoint at Gurus, the computer starts to turn the plane to put it into the holding pattern that had been programmed in. Air traffic control noticed and called them on it and told them to maintain their heading. Sultan manages to quickly correct the mistake and switches the heading mode on the navigation computer and turns the plane to try and get back on track. Now, the only problem with this is while in heading mode, the computer ignores any navigational programming and the plane has to be turned manually. And he also didn't factor in the cross blind, which was pushing him further and further to the right, away from the airport, so they would completely miss the turret to line up the land on runway 02. They turned too late and were flying parallel to the airport. Captain Salton began going through the pre-landing checklist and said the landing gear was down when in fact it was not. Moments later, when the landing gear alarms started going off, they completely ignored it, along with the going too fast speed alarms. The Camp Man Dew Tower told them again that they were cleared for runway 0-2 and that it looked like they were setting off for runway 2-0. The single runway at the airport was 0-2 if coming from the south, but coming from the north it was runway 2-0. Same runway just depends on what direction you're flying in from. Two minutes later, the tower asked what their intentions were, and Salton replied saying they're gonna be landing on runway 0-2, even though they've now completely missed the airport. Salton is lost with no idea where he actually is. He still expects the runway to be ahead of him somewhere, so he continues to fly the plane towards the mountains ahead. The air traffic controller, trying to control the situation, tells them to make a U-turn for the downwind leg to line up for runway 2-0. But instead of a U-turn, Sultan makes a sharp right turn, baking the plane over 30 degrees to come back around. As the plane's altitude dropped to less than 200 feet, proximity alarms started going off in the cockpit, further adding to the confusion. At this point, Rasheed finally notices the landing gear is not down and lowers it. They continue to fly to the west without spotting the runway before Sultan throws the plane into another steep right turn, making the plane up to 45 degrees to make it, completely unaware that this would potentially put them in the path of another plane. Buddha Air Flight 282 had been granted clearance to land on the runway, but if they couldn't make it on the first pass, which is fairly common here, they would have to fly around and they would be flying directly into the area Flight 211 was in. Buddha Air would make it down safely without requiring a second pass, however. But while Air Traffic Controller is trying to figure out what exactly Flight 211 is doing, they finally spot runway 2-0 two miles away, which meant another sharp right turn to get lined up. And of course, they were coming in too fast and too high, so they overflew the end of the runway and banked sharply to the left, buzzing over houses and people in the area. Air traffic control, disturbed by the erratic flight, cancelled their landing clearance. However, Sultan wasn't having it. He was bound and determined to land the plane. So he comes flying back 50 feet over the domestic terminal and, thinking he was Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun, buzzed the tower, narrowly missing it before pulling up and going into a steep climb, causing the air traffic controllers in the tower to duck in fear. As they flew past the tower, they banked sharply again to try to line up with runway 2-0. And as they came down, the plane hit the runway halfway down its length with its right main landing gear at a 15-degree angle at over 140 miles per hour. The plane skidded and bounced off the runway and smashed through a perimeter fence before rolling and sliding down a slope, coming to a stop 1400 feet from the runway. And as the plane was bashing and rolling its way through the field, it was quickly engulfed in flames. It would take two minutes for firefighters to reach the downplane, and another 15 before they could bring the fire under control. 22 passengers survived the initial landing and were taken to local hospitals. However, two of them would later die from their wounds. Immediately after the crash, the CEO of US Bangalore announced in a press conference how he doubted there was any negligence on the part of the pilots and started to try to push all the blame off on the air traffic controllers, blaming them for misleading the pilots, which led to them trying to land on the wrong runway. And they insisted that the Bangladesh and Nepal governments work together to launch a fair investigation into what happened. And boy, would that come back to bite them in the ass. They also came out and said they'd cover all hospital expenses and pay the families of those killed$25,000. So the Nepal government created the Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee to investigate and figure out what happened so they can take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again. Assisting the sixth member commission was the head of the aircraft accident investigation group of the Civil Aviation Authority, which is a lot of words for saying the Bangladesh version of the FAA. Along with a senior investigator from the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, since the Dash 8 was made in Canada, they were extremely interested to know what went wrong. During the investigation, the Commission determined pretty quickly that there were no problems with the plane. So they turned their attention to the crew, and that's when everything with the pilot started coming out. The cockpit voice recorder had captured his hour-long emotional breakdown, his crying and screaming at ground personnel, ranting about all of his personal problems, and chain smoking in the cockpit. He also confessed during the flight about his resignation and how he was nervous about the future and where he was gonna work since this dumbass had no job lined up, and also how he had not gotten any sleep the previous night. So he was already facing a lot of stress on top of the added stress of flying such a challenging flight and having multiple alarms going off in his ear because he fucked up and skipped steps and flat out wasn't paying attention to anything other than his own little pity party in the cockpit. And of course, the entire time, First Officer Rashid was left completely helpless. With her being such a junior rank and being so inexperienced, she was unable to question the captain or call him out on any of his bullshit. And she was most likely a little bit afraid. This shithead had already snapped off on other people over the radio and had been ranting and raving for the last hour about another female pilot. So if she said anything, what's the likelihood this shithead is gonna snap off on her too? I mean she's stuck in this tiny cockpit with him, so not a real good situation to be in, any way you look at it. And then the whole fuck up with the navigation computer, along with everything going on that led them to lose their way and become disoriented and confused on where they were in relation to the airport. So the investigation was rightly placing all of the blame for the accident squarely on Salton, something the single Bangladeshi representative took issue with. He was desperately trying to shift blame off on the air traffic controllers, saying they did not do their jobs right, and had they provided the right navigational aid, the whole thing could have been avoided. Which is complete and utter bullshit. While they may have made some minor errors, there was no way in hell they could have saved the plane from a confused and angry pilot who was hellbent on landing the plane at any cost. In 2025, the Camp Mandu District Court ordered US Bangla Airlines to pay each of the families of the crash victims$2.74 million, a hell of a lot more than what they were trying to get away with earlier. And that was US Bangalore Flight 211. Thanks for listening, and if you liked the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your app of choice. And you can always reach out to the show at historiesadisaster at gmail.com with questions, comments, suggestions, as well as following the show on social media Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, whatever. And share the episode. Your friends will love it. And take a plane ride with the penguin. They love the flying planes, since their wings are useless for well anything other than swimming. And chase that dream! Live for today, because tomorrow is never guaranteed. Thanks and goodbye.