The new provision is applicable to all flights complying with the visual flight rules.
Kathmandu:
Nepal on Tuesday tightened flight permit rules for airlines, making it mandatory to have clear weather across the route, after preliminary investigations indicated inclement weather was the main cause of the plane crash in the Himalayan country’s mountainous Mustang district on Sunday. In which all 22 people died. group.
So far, Nepal’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), has been issuing permits to airlines when the weather conditions are fine at the source and destination airports. But, from now on, the weather conditions along the way of the flight will also be observed.
Nepal being a mountainous country, the weather conditions are always fluctuating and it is difficult to operate flights in the mountainous region without proper weather forecasting mechanism.
The new provision is applicable to all flights complying with the visual flight rules.
As per the notice issued by CAAN, while submitting the flight plan, the airlines are required to furnish the weather forecast information received from the Hydrology and Meteorological Department regarding the flight destination and route weather.
Preliminary investigations revealed that Tara Air’s Canadian-made turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET aircraft crashed in the mountains after turning right instead of turning left due to bad weather.
The Canadian-made turboprop Twin Otter 9N-AET aircraft was carrying four Indian, two German and 13 Nepalese passengers besides a three-member Nepalese crew.
The government has set up a five-member inquiry commission headed by senior aeronautical engineer Ratish Chandra Lal Suman to find out the causes of the Tara Air plane crash, in which 22 people, including four Indians and two Germans, were killed.
Nepal, a country often referred to as one of the world’s riskiest places to fly, has had a horrific record of aviation accidents, partly due to its abrupt weather changes and its location in mountainous terrain. Because of the straps.
Unstable weather patterns are not the only problem for flight operations in Nepal. According to CAAN’s 2019 safety report, Nepal’s “hostile topography” is also part of the “bigger challenge” facing pilots.
In 2016, all 23 people aboard were killed when a plane of the same airline flying the same route crashed after takeoff.
In March 2018, a US-Bangla air crash occurred at Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 51 people.
In September 2012, a Sita Air flight crashed while making an emergency landing at Tribhuvan International Airport, killing 19 people.
A Pokhara to Jomsom plane crashed near Jomsom airport on 14 May 2012, killing 15 people.
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