The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) will be doing a scheduled safety audit of Nepal's aviation sector next week. A team of 10 auditors from the United Nations specialised agency are slated to arrive in Kathmandu on Sunday. They will begin work on April 13 which will last 10 days.

“We have completed preparations from our side,” said Deo Chandra Lal Karna, spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

The ICAO experts will review Nepal's aviation safety and aviation security oversight capacities, and check whether safety-related Standards and Recommended Practices have been effectively implemented.

The audit is of particular importance at this time as Nepal is readying to open two new international airports in Pokhara and Bhairahawa.

Experts say that the audit team is expected to show special interest in the level of progress in the separation of Nepal's civil aviation body.

According to them, two crucial bills to break up the civil aviation body into regulator and service provider have been gathering dust for a long time, hampering Nepal’s effort to ensure a full aviation safety system.

Insiders say the failure to pass the proposed pieces of legislation may be an obstacle to getting a full score.

The Universal Safety Oversight Audit Programme Continuous Monitoring Approach (USOAP CMA) focuses on a state's capability to provide safety oversight by assessing whether it has effectively and consistently implemented the critical elements of the safety oversight system. The last such assessment was done in 2009.

The outcome of the audit score is crucial for Nepal and its burgeoning tourism and aviation industry as it could impact the international expansion plans of investors.

The decennial full safety audit of Nepal’s aviation sector was to have been conducted in 2019, but the government had asked to defer it by a year.

The reason for the postponement was to give the government time to complete institutional reform: Splitting the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal into regulator and service provider.

As per international norms, the same entity cannot be both service provider and regulator, two roles the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal has been performing currently by providing airport services and also overseeing compliance with aviation regulations.

Such dual functions lead to a conflict of interest, the European Commission, for example, has maintained.

ICAO had agreed to the request for the year-long deferment, and had planned to conduct a full safety audit of Nepal from May 10-20, 2020.

Covid-19 further pushed back the schedule. The ICAO team was expected to arrive for an audit on March 21, 2021, but due to the pandemic and consequent border closures, the plan was shelved once again.

“The global aviation safety watchdog will start its audit from zero,” according to an official at the civil aviation body.

ICAO will look into eight critical elements of aviation safety—primary legislation; organisation and safety oversight functions; personnel licensing; aircraft operations; airworthiness of aircraft; aerodromes; air navigation system; and accident and incident investigation.

Out of the eight critical elements, accident and incident investigation comes under the responsibility of the Civil Aviation Ministry, as it is responsible for monitoring developments in accident investigation techniques and practices as well as accident prevention matters.

"Based on the audit, ICAO will award Nepal a score for effective implementation of safety standards after 90 days," said Karna, who has been nominated as the national coordinator from the Nepali side.

During the last audit on May 14, 2009, ICAO gave Nepal a score of 46 percent in the effective implementation of critical elements of the safety oversight system, which was way below the global average of 60 percent.

In July 2013, a mission visited Nepal to validate the corrective measures taken by the country to address the deficiencies pointed out by the global aviation watchdog in 2009.

It detected several lapses during an on-site audit held from July 10-16, and ICAO gave a “significant safety concern” tag to Nepal’s aviation sector in its audit report in August 2013.

The 2013 audit report pointed out that Nepal’s score of 54.97 percent was still far below the global average. The Montréal-based agency raised the red flag on operations among the eight critical elements of safety oversight due to a sharp rise in the number of air accidents and incidents between 2009 and 2012.

Based on the significant safety concern tag, the European Commission blacklisted all Nepali carriers in December 2013 for the worst record in air safety oversight.

Nepal invited the next audit in 2017 to observe the progress of its safety enhancement effort.

In July 2017, the ICAO-coordinated validation mission gave Nepal a score of 66.76 percent for effective implementation of safety standards—which is above the benchmark of 60 percent set by ICAO through its Global Aviation Safety Plan.

That same year, ICAO withdrew the significant safety concern tag given to Nepal’s aviation sector.

According to an internal audit of the country’s civil aviation body, Nepal in its current position can achieve a 67.8 percent score for effective implementation of safety standards, which is slightly higher than the benchmark of 65 percent.

Accident trends (per 1,000 departures) and fatality related to aeroplanes registered a continuous steep drop, according to the data of the past 10 years (2011-20), the Aviation Safety Report 2021 said.

Fatalities related to helicopter accidents, however, have been on the rise. During the past 10 years, there has been a steady growth in helicopter movement.

The civil aviation body said that helicopter operations were required for logistic, rescue and relief purposes because of the country's mountainous and inaccessible terrain. Tourism growth has also led to an increase in helicopter flights.

In the fixed wing sector, the higher number of fatal accidents and fatalities have been related to multi-engine aircraft of 19-seat or smaller capacity. Such aircraft have been involved in 13 accidents with 99 fatalities in the past 10 years.

Coming second in the list is helicopter operations with 13 accidents and 27 fatalities.

During the last 10 years, aircraft operating in the short take-off and landing (STOL) sector have been involved in more accidents than aircraft operating on trunk sectors. Among the 19 accidents that occurred during the period, 16 were in the STOL sector which shows that STOL flights are riskier.

In 2020, aircraft operations were halted for months due to the travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to the aviation regulator, only one accident occurred in 2020. There were 13 serious incidents and 199 incidents in 2020.

As per Nepal's Aviation Safety Plan 2018-22, the country will seek to improve its rate of effective implementation of the critical elements of the safety oversight system to 75 percent by 2022. The safety indicators keep fluctuating all the time.