Pilot error is blamed for Nepalese air crash

37 of them British. A Scottish hospital consultant was among the

victims.

As rescue teams continued the search for bodies in the wreckage of the

Pakistani International Airlines A300 on a hillside near Kathmandu

airport, it emerged that the pilot had been 1500ft too low as he came in

to land.

Flight PX268, en route to the Nepalese capital from Karachi, was

carrying scores of European holidaymakers, many of them back-packers and

members of climbing teams.

But on its approach to the airport during a rainstorm, the aircraft

plunged into an isolated hillside and burst into flames.

Today, senior Nepalese civil aviation officials said the pilot had

been 1500ft below his prescribed flight path as he came in to land at

the mountain-ringed airport which has no radar facility.

''Apart from that, we have no clues as to why the plane crashed,''

said one.

There were also reports that the pilot had switched off equipment

enabling him to land automatically and had planned to take the aircraft

down manually.

In steady rain, rescue teams worked throughout today to salvage bodies

from wreckage strewn across more than a square mile of wooded hillside

and by tonight had recovered 60 bodies.

Four-wheel drive vehicles were used to ferry the bodies to the airport

eight miles away where they were laid out for identification.

Rescue teams also recovered the aircraft's cockpit voice recorder and

flight data recorder.

''The whole area is covered by clouds and no helicopter can land. It

will take two or three days at least to complete the search and rescue

work,'' said one official.

In London, the Foreign Office said tonight that relatives of about

three quarters of the Britons on board the crashed airbus had now been

contacted.

More than 30 relatives of Britons killed in the crash have now said

they want to travel to Nepal on a flight leaving Heathrow tomorrow, PIA

said tonight.

In Karachi, Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority officials said the

airline would pay compensation of between #5800 and about #44,000 per

victim to the families of those killed.

Investigators from PIA and Airbus Industrie, the European consortium

which built the aircraft, are heading for Kathmandu to investigate the

cause of the crash.

One of the victims was Dr Alison Gourdie, 34, who joined the Forth

Valley Health Board in April as consultant in accident and emergency

based at Falkirk, but working also at Stirling Royal Infirmary.

Dr Gourdie, who was single and planning a trekking holiday, became

known to millions of television viewers for her work as casualty

department registrar at ''Jimmy's'' -- St James' University Hospital in

Leeds.

She was educated at Albyn School, Aberdeen, from 1962 to 1975 and

graduated from Aberdeen University with an MBChB in 1981. She became a

Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Glasgow, in 1985, adding a

further qualification in accident and emergency work in Edinburgh in

1987.

Her first hospital post was as a house surgeon at Aberdeen Royal

Infirmary in 1981 and she also worked as a house physician there.

In 1982, she moved to Monklands District General Hospital, Airdrie, as

a senior house officer.

In 1984 and 1985, Dr Gourdie worked at Perth Royal Infirmary before

moving to North Manchester General Hospital, but later returned to

Scotland to work at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.

Dr Gourdie had also been senior registrar at Pinderfields General

Hospital, Wakefield.

Forth Valley Health Board official Margaret McBride said today: ''The

initial reaction at the Stirling unit is one of deep shock and extreme

sadness at the loss of such a talented young colleague.''

For recently-married Caroline and Peter Jones from Harrogate, North

Yorkshire, the trip to Kathmandu was the first leg of a 12-month

round-the-world dream holiday.

Computer engineer Peter, 34, and Caroline, 28, an assistant manager

with a building society in Wetherby, North Yorkshire, had planned to go

on to south-east Asia and New Zealand before returning home via the US.

Mick Hardwick, 33, and Dave Harries, 33, were planning a two-man

alpine-style ascent of the south face of Annapurna, one of the highest

peaks in the Himalayas.

Mr Hardwick, of Tregarth, near Bangor, was one of the most highly

regarded men in British mountaineering.

Also on board the flight was his wife, Sue Hardwick, and Alison Cope,

in her late 20s.

Another top British climber Mark Miller, 31, died in the crash.A

partner in a Sheffield adventure holiday company, he was travelling with

a friend, Victor Radvils, 27, from Sheffield, to meet a party of 10

mountaineers to climb Makalu II.--PA/Reuter.