To be clear : regardind Yeti airlines being "banned" from the EU, as Yo-You etc. mentioned already this has very little to do with the airline itself , but it is rather the Nepalese State regulatory weakness in enforcing standard regulations to airlines and/or ATC. All the 20 airlnes of Nepal are on the list, not only a few.. To the defence of the State , it is one of very poorest countries in the world and their ability to enforce western regulations is also very poor. I was there a decade ago a few times , part of a team to try to improve things on the ATC side, We met a few times the Transport Minister at the time , he was a retired American-Nepali Architect who decided to come back and help and serve his country of birth, When we talked about radar, training staff properly to use it, licences , he replied bridges and road ifrastucture. His line of thought basically was when I have money I spend it first on Nepalese people, improving tourists safety is important but come second. I must say I cannot blame him .We managed to have a few small things accepted like changing the approach glide slope gradient in KTM from the 9 degrees to 5.3 , , but the the earthquake struck and priorities changed. There is still no ILS in KTM and will never be as the new RNP AR procedure designed by Airbus was given for free but is of no interest to the domestic airlines that operate in Nepal,
Back to Yeti, when I was there ,our local contacts had a list of who to fly with and who to avoid, Buddah was on top at that time . , Yeti was not .But I saw that Yeti and Tara ( same owner) have changed in the meantime and improved a lot . Yo-You etc can confirm or not. The current boss appears to know what he is doing , like introducing modern ATR-72s.. but the type is not suited for the Mountains destinations so they reduced airports they served.using Tara older but smaller types for those.
10 yaers ago one of the main problem for the smaller airlines was maintenance and spares. Not sure is this is still a factor today , but if it still is , it could be the elephant in the room here ..
Last remarks on the pilots. Again 10 yaers ago , all of them were local Nepali , a quite a few women too. The old Ziegler motto ( the one from Air Alpes , not Airbus) : " It is far easier to train a local mountain guy to fly than to teach an experienced pilot. to fly in the mountains " is still valid. They were good, some very good. Most of the accidents they have ,( about 1 fatal every year on average ) are weather related. There is ( at least was) no weather forecast system in Nepal , no weather stations at destination airports., just what the local Tower controller , generally alone for 8 hours) would report what he /she saw. . The environement is hostile and unforgiven .
Therefore when I read the reported experience of both the Captain and the F/O , see the weather that day and the absence of hindering terrain around , I have difficulty to believe one of them would let an aircraft stall on base leg , Must be something else. But let's see what the CVR/FDR will tell us .