Nepal plane crash: infrastructure revamp needed to cope with 'treacherous terrain', experts say
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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"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.
"The whole idea is to find the factors that led to the crash so that we can prevent other crashes. Nepal may not have the ability to do a comprehensive investigation that is required."
Nepal has suffered 42 fatal plane crashes since 1946, according to the Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety database.
The last major air accident occurred on May 29, 2022, when all 22 people on board a Tara Air plane crashed in the mountainous Mustang district. In 2016, 23 people were killed when a plane of the same airline on the same route crashed after take-off.
The landlocked nation is highly dependent on aviation to deliver critical supplies of food and medicine to several remote areas where road transport journeys can easily take a month or longer, Martin pointed out.
Foreign trekkers and climbers as well as ordinary tourists also rely on air transport to access its breathtaking mountain ranges. Tourism accounts for 6.7 per cent of the nation's GDP, according to the World Bank.
H.S. Khola, former director general of civil aviation in India, said Nepal would need to ensure technological systems such as warning systems aboard planes and those on air traffic control were up to date.
"Weather is usually a problem in hilly terrain. The communication signals from the ground to the plane do not pass easily through the mountains," Khola said. "Sometimes the range of communication can be as low as 2km to 3km."
The biggest disasters usually occur because of poor weather or faulty technological systems, causing the plane to go down too quickly and thereby damaging the landing gear, according to Khola. The fuel stored in the wings can catch fire and spread to the engines.
A Sita Air flight crashed in September 2012 while making an emergency landing at the Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
Sunday's plane crash is likely to affect Nepal's tourism sector, which was on the cusp of recovery after travel restrictions were eased last September and the country started issuing on arrival visas to all vaccinated travellers.
Tourist numbers hit a high in October when Indian travellers - who make up the largest number of visitors - came over for key festivals such as Dussehra and Diwali.
The Pokhara Regional International Airport, where the plane crashed on Sunday, was inaugurated on January 1 this year by Nepal's Prime Minister Kamal Dahal "Prachanda", signifying the country was keen to boost tourism.
"It is unfortunate. All flights to Nepal (from India) were going full," said Subhash Goyal, president of India's Confederation of Tourism Professionals. "Now, they need to get their act together otherwise tourism will be badly affected."
Nepal was trying to promote new destinations to revive its economy that has been battered by the pandemic and high inflation. The reopening of China - which makes up for around 14 per cent of tourists - was also expected to benefit the nation.
Most Chinese tourists usually travel to the mountainous country on chartered planes.
A delegation from the Travel Agents Association of India would head to Nepal later this month to scout out two new destinations - Nepalganj and Bardiya - to promote to travellers.
Nepal had worked hard to improve road connectivity, but the most reliable form of transport remained aviation, said Jyoti Mayal, the association's president.
"It is very sad that the air crash happened, but I am hopeful that the impact on the tourism industry won't be lasting," she added.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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