It was a sunny morning on Tuesday when a Mexican family excitedly took off on a helicopter tour of Everest. They had seen many videos of the world’s highest peak on YouTube, and wanted to go and see it by themselves.

So the father, mother, son and two daughters arrived in Nepal from Mexico, and booked a helicopter tour to the 8,848.86-metre giant.

“They were very excited to make a helicopter tour of the breathtaking Everest,” said Captain Prakash Kumar Sedhain, a flight safety director at Manang Air. “Unfortunately, it ended in disaster.”

The monsoon is not a good time for climbing expeditions to the Himalaya or trekking in the mountains. The weather is bad, the trekking routes slippery, so hiking is full of risks. But a few enthusiasts go on helicopters to get a close look at the soaring heights of rock and ice.

On Tuesday morning, the Mexican family fulfilled a long-held wish with a nearly hour-long tour of Everest with Manang Air. Their helicopter then made a stop at Surke, a mountain village south of Everest, to refuel for the return flight to Kathmandu.

Surke village, which lies at an altitude of 2,300 metres, is situated near the famed Lukla Airport which is the starting-off point for Everest expeditions.

At 10:05 am, the helicopter carrying the Mexican family took off from Surke for Kathmandu, and was lost immediately after. According to a statement issued by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the chopper made its last contact with Lukla Airport tower at 10:13 am.

It took rescuers five hours to locate the site where the craft had gone down, killing all on board. The Manang Air helicopter bearing registration number 9N-AMV had slammed into a hillside at Lamjura.

The crash site lies at an elevation of about 3,500 metres in Likhupike Rural Municipality of Solukhumbu district. At 5.30 pm, all six bodies were airlifted to Kathmandu for postmortem.

The five Mexican passengers and Captain Chet Bahadur Gurung, who was flying the helicopter, were killed, said Dipak Kumar Shrestha, Deputy Superintendent of Police at the Solukhumbu District Police Office.

“The weather was not good. It was raining heavily at the site where the chopper had crashed. It looks like the accident was caused by bad weather.”

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has expressed sorrow over the crash.

The exact reason behind the catastrophe is not known, and a government fact-finding commission is to launch a detailed investigation. A Cabinet meeting on Tuesday evening announced an investigation commission led by Buddhi Sagar Lamichhane, joint secretary at the Ministry of Tourism.