Tragedy in Nepal with sixth air crash in two years

28 September, 2012

Another plane crash in the boundaries of Nepal, claiming 19 innocent lives, has raised a question as to what Nepal's government is doing to provide safe air travel to foreign tourists. Today morning's air crash is the sixth plane crash in less than 2 years, and more than local Nepalese, it is foreign tourists including those from Britain, Japan, China and India who have lost their lives in these air crashes.

IN THE latest fatal plane crash of the Dornier aircraft of the private airline, sixteen passengers and three crew members lost their lives, including seven Briton and five Chinese. The plane belongs to Sita Airways, and was heading towards Lukla, the gateway to Mt Everest, and crashed two minutes after it took off at 6:15 am (local time), airport officials said.

The plane caught fire as it took off from Kathmandu Airport and in less than a kilometer of distance it crashed on the bank of the Manahara river in Koteshwor region, and three crew members and 16 tourists died on the spot.

"I was just walking and saw a plane landing. It was caught in fire and I even heard people inside the plane screaming," a witness told Kantipur Television, reported Hindustan Times.

This is not something that has happened for the first time but this is the sixth fatal plan crash in Nepal in less than just two years. On May 14th this year, in another plane crash 15 people lost their lives including 13 passengers and 2 crew members, while 6 of them miraculously survived. This was the crash in which child artist Taruni Sachdev, who worked with Amitabh Bachchan in the film Paa, also died on her 14th birthday with her mother. Dornier 228-200 from Agni airlines of Nepal carrying pilgrimages from Pokhara to Jomson, Nepal, and crashed into the side of a mountain near Marpha, Nepal.

In September last year the Buddha Air Beechcraft plane, carrying 10 Indians, two Americans, one Japanese citizen and three local passengers, and taking tourists on a sightseeing trip around Everest crashed into a hillside near the Kathmandu, also killing all 19 people on board at Godavari, about 10 kilometres from the capital.

Nepal's road network is already very poor and despite arrival of numerous tourists, pilgrims and professional climbers, the government is not putting any effort to improve the road network into the mountains. Thus, travellers have to rely on these small and local airlines, which too are not maintained properly. So to reach remote areas of this country, there are 16 domestic airlines and 49 airports.

There are airports that are surrounded by big mountains and thus there is a need to have more experts and trained pilots and crews. Narrow runways and close mountains are clearly a big risk and in this situation not having properly maintained aircrafts increases risk for people going to visit this beautiful country.

Air planes already face many natural disadvantages including unpredictable bad weather, so it is vital for Nepal's government to take extra precautions and have tough guidelines for the maintenance of planes for private airlines, to save lives of many tourists and locals.