Nepal has an unenviable record of air tragedies on its mountains but course correction is missing

In an eerie reminder of a crash that occurred on May 14, 2012, a plane flying from Pokhara to Jomsom crashed near the Jomsom Airport, killing 15 people. Ten years later, in the same month and on the same route, another aircraft apparently hit a mountainside, crashed and snuffed out 22 lives. The 2012 flight was operated by Agni Air, Nepal’s domestic airliner, flying a Dornier Do-228 plane. This time, it was a turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET aircraft belonging to Tara Air. The airline came into business in 2009 to help develop rural Nepal, and claiming to be the “newest and biggest” airline service provider in the Nepalese mountains. However, air tragedies are nothing new in Nepal’s hilly terrain. These are frequent and inquiry commissions are set up after each such accident but hardly any tangible steps are taken for course correction. For one, most of the aircraft in service are old planes, some of these being a second-hand buy. Another reason is the lack of modern navigational and technical facilities to aid the pilots and the Air Traffic Controller during inclement weather, which is a rather frequent and unpredictable phenomenon in any mountainous area.

The airlines, in their desire to make a quick buck, resort to underhand tactics like hiring semi-qualified staff to operate the almost-ramshackle planes. Nepal, home to eight of the world’s highest 14 mountains, including Everest, has an unenviable record of air accidents. In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying on the same route crashed soon after take-off. In March 2018, a US-Bangla Air crash occurred at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people on board. Earlier, in September 2012, a Sita Air flight crashed while making an emergency landing at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people. In the latest incident, the small plane with 22 people on board, including four Indians, flying on a popular tourist route went missing in the mountains of Nepal on Sunday. The aircraft, on a 15-minute flight from Pokhara to Jomsom, both popular destinations with foreign hikers who trek on mountain trails as well as Indian and Nepalese Hindu devotees who visit the revered Muktinath temple, lost contact with the ATC shortly after taking off. The crash took place at Thasang-2 in Mustang district at a height of 14,500 feet.