Kathmandu, Nepal – Commercial flights are considered to be one of the safest means of transportation around the world, not so much in Nepal.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has recorded at least 68 plane crashes in the country since 1955 – 44 of them fatal, including Sunday’s crash of a Yeti Airlines passenger plane that killed all 72 people on board.
The latest tragedy has reignited debates over flight safety in the Himalayan nation, home to some of the world’s highest peaks including Mount Everest and hugely popular with foreign tourists, mountaineers and skiers.
Al Jazeera cites three main reasons Nepal’s skies are prone to air disasters, which have killed more than 900 people since 1955.
weather and terrain
Picturesque Nepal is home to treacherous terrain and unpredictable weather, especially during the monsoons. Because of this, Nepalese aviation is largely dependent on a limited type of aircraft such as Twin Otters, Let-L 410s and Dorniers.
Such aircraft require shorter take-off and landing sites (STOL) in high-altitude areas as opposed to the so-called trunk sector – the region with better airports where larger aircraft can fly.
“The unpredictable weather change in the highlands between takeoff and landing is the reason for most accidents. On these routes, most domestic flights use visual flight rules (VFR), where the pilot controls and navigates the aircraft using visual references from the outside,” aviation expert Sanjeev Gautam told Al Jazeera.
A senior pilot with national carrier Nepal Airlines said “the high terrain is difficult and moreover we lack good equipment and facilities”.
“We need ground equipment as well as a better equipped aircraft with newer technology in the STOL sector,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“With our weather conditions it is not possible to follow the VFR rules exactly. For example, the rules say not to enter the clouds, but sometimes avoiding them is impossible. Therefore, pilots run the risk of breaking the rules,” he added.
aging planes
Aviation experts say commercial aircraft never get to the point where they are no longer airworthy and still in service.
“Planes don’t age like we think they do. Of course they get old when we consider their date of manufacture. But since the parts are replaced fairly often, they stay functional for many years,” Gautam told Al Jazeera.
“But we have to understand that the older the aircraft, the higher the maintenance costs. It’s like any other machinery,” he said.
Most aircraft operating in Nepal are not brand new. They cost a lot and flying may not be profitable in an economically backward nation.
“We have to choose to buy used aircraft because we cannot keep the same ticket prices when investing in a new aircraft,” Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesman for Yeti Airlines, told Al Jazeera.
Manufacturers say that an airplane’s parts should be routinely replaced at certified repair shops.
Prior to the purchase of an aircraft, a standard procedure of “type certification” is performed by civil aviation authorities such as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) or other contracting state agency before it is awarded a certificate of airworthiness for operation .
The 15-year-old Yeti ATR 72-500 that crashed in the tourist town of Pokhara on Sunday in clear weather had also gone through this rigorous process before being allowed to fly in Nepal.
“It was a sophisticated model that is very suitable for Nepal, but we don’t know what went wrong,” spokesman Bartaula said.
“It’s not that this plane was old, there are much older planes flying in the Nepalese skies.”
A French investigator photographs the wreckage of the plane that crashed in Pokhara, Nepal [Yunish Gurung/AP Photo]
bureaucracy
The United Nations-controlled International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has recommended Nepal to unbundle the CAAN and separate it from performing two roles: a regulator and a service provider.
ICAO says such a situation is contradictory. This dichotomy is also said to be one of the main reasons why the EU has been blacklisting Nepalese planes flying into its territory since 2013.
Splitting these two CAAN duties is what Nepalese pilots, operators and experts say is crucial to the reforms needed in the country’s aviation sector.
“It is very important that we separate the two working functions of the CAAN as soon as possible. This is the first step in transforming the entire Nepalese aviation industry,” expert Gautam told Al Jazeera.
Family members mourn a victim of Sunday’s crash in Pokhara [File: Rohit Giri/Reuters]
Since 2020, two aviation-related bills have been before the Nepalese parliament, calling for a division of tasks between CAAN and a restructuring of the national aviation sector.
Aviation expert Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, former director general of CAAN, said a body overhaul is not easy.
“A mere separation of the two will not help, it is also very important to assign autonomy and sustainability to the two entities. We need to make sure the regulatory half is strong and sustainable too,” Suman told Al Jazeera.
When separated, one part is responsible for aviation law issues such as security and inspections, while the service provider ventures into managing infrastructure and airports.
To reform the airline industry, Suman proposes strict enforcement of the regulations.
“We need strict enforcement. The fines for violating aviation rules are peanuts, no one has been charged, not a license has been revoked. It is high time that we ensure this in our industry so that there is no wrongdoing,” he told Al Jazeera.
Experts are also of the opinion that the pilots in Nepal need more and proper training.
“In the end, everyone points to pilot error in accidents. But the preamble to this is the operator who should provide proper training to get top-notch pilots,” said the Nepal Airlines pilot.
Gautam believes that blaming pilots won’t solve the problem.
“It is important to understand that operators hire the pilot and these operators are overseen by the CAAN, which authorizes their licenses. So if we find fault in one pilot, we should know that the fault is in the whole system where everyone is interconnected.”