Airline officials said they were investigating what caused the plane to miss the runway.

US-Bangla Airlines said the pilot was experienced, with 5,000 hours of flying, and that there had been no evidence of a mechanical failure.

An airline executive said there might have been “some confusion” between the pilot and the airport control tower. “However, this is a matter of investigation. The probe committee will look into it,” said the executive, Mohammad Kamrul Islam, general manager of marketing support for the airline.

An audio recording was posted on YouTube on Monday night that Mr. Islam said “seemed to be the last conversation between the pilot and the control tower.” In the recording, the pilot requests to land but the control tower tells the pilot that there is traffic on the runway. Mr. Islam added that he could not confirm if the audio recording was authentic and that the “black box will unveil everything.”

Aviation experts said the recording indicated that the pilot was disoriented, possibly by unclear directions from the control tower. He seemed to be heading for the wrong runway when the control tower canceled his permission to land. The pilot then tried to go around to the right runway but was flying too low and plowed into the ground.

The crash shut down the airport, with all operations grinding to a halt.

This airport can get quite busy: It is the entry point for hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. Many come to trek in the Himalayas, and on Monday afternoon, several large jetliners were sitting on the tarmac, about to take off, while arriving planes circled pending permission to land.

Some were short on fuel as they waited. The airport reopened about two and a half hours later.

The posted schedule of the crashed plane identified it as Flight 211, a Bombardier Dash 8 from Dhaka, scheduled to land at 2:15 p.m., around the actual time of the crash. The plane, a twin-engine turboprop, can carry as many as 78 passengers.