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Nepal
This Week in AsiaPolitics

Nepal plane crash: infrastructure revamp needed to cope with ‘treacherous terrain’, experts say

  • Pilots require ‘a whole different level of awareness’ to land safely in Nepal, where a flight crashed with 72 people on board over the weekend
  • Global aviation watchdogs must support Nepal in investigating cause of plane crash and improving its fraught flight safety record, observers urge

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Rescue teams work to retrieve bodies from the wreckage of the crash of a Yeti Airlines aircraft, in Pokhara, Nepal on Monday. Photo: Reuters
Biman Mukherji
Nepal’s weekend plane crash shows that authorities must “get their act together” and improve the country’s aviation infrastructure to cope with one of the world’s most treacherous terrain, observers say, or risk another disaster waiting to happen.
Sixty-eight people were confirmed dead as of Monday afternoon, after a Yeti Airlines aircraft crashed into a gorge in clear weather while landing at a newly opened airport in the resort town of Pokhara on Sunday.

It is Nepal’s deadliest plane crash in three decades, but the country has had a fraught aviation record which experts attribute partly to hard-to-access rocky terrain and sudden weather changes in the Himalayan nation with the tallest mountain peaks in the world.

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Dozens killed in Pokhara plane crash, Nepal’s deadliest air tragedy in three decades

Dozens killed in Pokhara plane crash, Nepal’s deadliest air tragedy in three decades

“Nepal has the most inhospitable and treacherous terrain that one can find in aviation. To fly an aircraft in Nepal needs a whole different level of awareness,” said Mark D Martin, member of the Royal Aeronautical Society UK and CEO of Martin Consulting and Aviation Safety firm in Asia.

But he added that Nepalese pilots were “amazingly skilled” and it would be wrong to pin the blame on pilot error without a thorough probe.

He also said global aviation watchdogs needed to support Nepal in revamping its airline infrastructure.

“It is extremely important that the crash is not only investigated by the civil aviation authority of Nepal, but also by the European Union Safety Agency which is at the forefront of safety regulation,” Martin said.

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