Nepal plane crash: How many more before the most dangerous country for air travel starts tackling safety?

Passenger aviation worldwide has turn into terribly protected. In 2023, there have been no deadly crashes involving passenger jet plane on scheduled flights.

Of the 2 deadly accidents – each involving propellor plane – the primary and deadliest was in Nepal. Yeti Airways flight YT673 from Kathmandu crashe on strategy to Pokhara. All 72 passengers and crew died in an accident attributed to pilot error.

Now we have but to seek out out what went incorrect with the newest tragedy, which occurred on the identical route. The Saurya Airways commuter jet was taking off from the Nepali capital when it rolled and crashed right into a ravine. The pilot survived however the remaining 18 on board didn’t.

The calamity takes Nepal to a tragic rating of 14 crashes in 14 years – a charge method past another nation on the earth.

The present sequence started in August 2010, when 14 folks misplaced their lives on an Agni Air home flight from Kathmandu to Lukla, which had turned again as a result of a technical drawback.

Twenty-two extra folks died aboard a Tara Air Twin Otter throughout a home flight to Kathmandu in December 2010.

In September 2011, 19 folks misplaced their lives on the strategy to Kathmandu on a Buddha Air Beechcraft.

A yr later, seven British passengers have been among the many 19 individuals who died aboard a Sita Air Dornier 228 that got here down shortly after take off from Kathmandu, vacation spot Lukla. They have been at the beginning of what was to be a three-week trek.

The crash was blamed on “a mix of things, together with an obese plane with an excessive amount of baggage stowed on board”.

The litany of tragedy continues. Crashes in elements of Africa, South America and the previous Soviet Union are removed from unknown. However accident charges in Nepal are a special order of magnitude – resembling these from the early days of mass passenger air transport within the Nineteen Fifties moderately than the ultra-safe 2020s.

The difficult terrain and climate in Nepal demand pilots and engineers of the very best requirements, however repeatedly they fall quick.

The nation’s airways have a tendency to make use of outdated, ill-maintained plane; the Saurya Airways airplane was over 20 years outdated, which isn’t a difficulty with good technical assist. However Nepal has insufficient coaching in, and enforcement of, worldwide aviation norms.

All Nepali airways are banned from the European Union due to security shortcomings.

For the previous decade, the Worldwide Civil Aviation Group has sought to enhance security below its “No Nation Left Behind” initiative. The purpose of this UN physique is to harmonise “Requirements and Beneficial Practices” – these very important norms that maintain the overwhelming majority of passengers and crew. The purpose is to offer each nation “entry to the numerous socio-economic advantages of a protected and dependable aviation system”.

Travellers to the mountain kingdom should proceed to weigh the dangers of flying – whereas additionally being conscious that Nepal’s roads are deadly, too, with an accident charge six instances increased than within the UK.

There’s little hope that this litany of tragedy will finish quickly.