KATHMANDU, OCTOBER 28
As Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba sets off to the United Kingdom to participate in the COP26 event, it is quite likely that his entourage will meet the European Commission's office bearers on the sidelines.
With Nepal continuing to be on the EC's flight ban list, it will be difficult for the Nepali delegation to convince the Europeans that tangible gains have been made, especially in the backdrop of the two high-profile crashes in 2018-19 -- the US-Bangla flight UBG 211 crash at Tribhuvan International Airport and the helicopter crash in Taplejung in which the sitting minister for civil aviation Rabindra Adhikari had perished.
"Nepali aviation's credibility has not been redeemed in any way," said a Nepali aviation expert.
According to sources at the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, while on the one hand, EC experts have begun questioning the credibility of the accident investigation reports produced, on the other hand, Nepali operators are returning to their wayward ways.
"The quality of flight crew training even at the biggest domestic operator - Buddha Air - became suspect when one of its recent flights made unnecessary headlines," a senior official recounted. A Buddha Air aircraft bound for Biratnagar had returned to TIA after the senior captain reported a malfunction in its landing gear on September 27.
He added that recent floods that inundated the Biratnagar airport damaging essential equipment, including passenger baggage X-ray, haven't helped burnish the reputation of the statutory regulator that continues to operate airports.
"Despite the identical flooding incident of 2017, CAAN managers chose not to learn a thing, and merrily, yet again, allowed the X-ray to go under water a second time," a senior manager at the private airlines said. According to him, despite Biratnagar being a certified aerodrome - implying that it meets the prevailing international standards - it has allowed flights by larger aircraft to operate while the essential visual guidance system, technically called PAPI (precision approach path indicator), remained unserviceable.
"PAPI is intended to allow the aircraft to achieve a precise touchdown at a designated area of the runway so as not to overshoot the runway and endanger occupants." A senior pilot at the Nepal Airlines Corporation added that Biratnagar airport does not have sufficient area at runway ends to allow the aircraft to safely come to a stop in the event of an unintended overshoot event. "The domestic airline operators who swear by the safety management system, too, chose to look the other way, as long as their flights were fully booked."
The government, however, has chosen not to constitute an inquiry committee in the aftermath of such an act of repeated negligence and sloppiness by CAAN.
A version of this article appears in the print on October 29, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
