There is a saying about Nepal’s aviation industry: Every new tourism minister is greeted by at least one crash.

This is because the industry is beset by deep-rooted corruption and mismanagement as the country builds airports worth billions of rupees but fails to attract flights. Improving safety remains a far cry.

On different occasions, global aviation watchdogs have voiced serious concerns about the capability of Nepal’s civil aviation authority to oversee safety issues.

In the past year and a half, more than 100 people have lost their lives in plane crashes—despite air travel being the world’s safest and most regulated industry in the world.

Wednesday’s crash is the seventh under Pradip Adhikari, the director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal who fits into all political systems, and the fourth fatal one of his tenure.

Here are a few examples of how policy corruption has paralysed the Nepali aviation industry, the lifeline of the country’s tourism industry and transport in the mountain region.

A few years back, a parliamentary sub-committee headed by Madhav Kumar Nepal had ordered the government to immediately split the civil aviation body due to its dual role of doing business and regulating the sector.

Nepal, the CPN (Unified Socialist) leader, sent Prem Ale to head the tourism ministry a few months later. Ale stopped the bills from being tabled in the lower house for discussion, although the upper house had passed them.

Then, Jeevan Ram Shrestha was appointed tourism minister. On his first day, he announced that he would wait to meet the European Commission’s request to separate Nepal’s civil aviation into regulatory and service-providing organisations.

After that, Sudan Kirati was picked as the tourism minister by the Maoist Centre. He took the initiative to register the civil aviation bills in Parliament.

Kirati had accused Director General Adhikari of consistently failing to ensure aviation safety, as five aircraft incidents and accidents, including three major disasters, have occurred under Adhikari’s watch.

Sources said then-prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal summoned Kirati and Adhikari and ordered them to work “in tandem”. Kirati then stopped talking about the separation.

The issue was then taken up by the parliamentary International Relations and Tourism Committee, which directed Dahal, then prime minister, to table the civil aviation bills in the House of Representatives as soon as possible. The directive was issued in December last year.

“The bills have been languishing for a long time. As we doubt the civil aviation ministry will table them in Parliament, we have directed the Prime Minister's Office to do so,” Raj Kishore Yadav, chairman of the committee, had told the Post.

A few months later, when the Post approached Yadav to inquire about any progress on the bills, Yadav replied that a split “was not necessary”. The budget for this fiscal year, too, makes no mention of the plan to split the aviation body, after including it in the federal government’s document for three consecutive years.

In April, lawmaker and member of the International Relations and Tourism Committee Udaya Shumsher Rana told an interaction that he was informed by a former tourism minister that there is an “invisible” hand preventing the passage of two crucial civil aviation bills.

In August 2022, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the United Nations aviation watchdog, formally asked Nepal to split the civil aviation body and ensure a proper regulatory system. However, the Civil Aviation Authority chose to keep the report secret.

A former director general said the tourism industry is bearing the repercussions as planes come down each passing year due to a lax regulatory system. “People are dying due to ‘policy corruption.’”

On a sunny Wednesday, nineteen people, including two crew members, were on the Saurya Airlines flight to Pokhara. The 50-seater bombardier CRJ 200 with registration mark 9N-AME was flying 15 technicians to the city, where the jet’s heavy maintenance C-check was planned.

At 11:11 am, the plane took off from the runway’s southern end (Koteshwar). But just a few seconds after the takeoff, people around the airport heard a loud “bang”.

“That was an unusual sound. It was a big bang like a bomb [exploding],” said a top official of a private airline, who was a close witness to the crash.

Video footage obtained by the Post shows that the jet rolled and climbed around 80-90ft from the ground. It then tilted towards the right and instantly came down. It hit the ground and burst into flames.

The plane then rolled down into a ravine.

The cockpit slammed into a cargo container, and it was stuck there, which observers say saved the pilot-in-command, Manish Ratna Shakya, the chief of the operation department at Saurya Airlines.

“The pilot survived. He is in stable condition,” said DIG Dan Bahadur Karki, spokesperson for Nepal Police. “It was a miracle.”

The fuselage came apart, hit the slope of the tabletop airport, and ricocheted 50 metres away, finally coming to rest on the muddy ground.

Eighteen people, including the co-pilot and a foreigner, died. The cockpit and tail were intact.

The 21.4-year-old aircraft was inducted into the Saurya Airlines fleet on March 14, 2017.

CCTV footage shows that the nature of the crash was similar to last January’s Yeti Airlines crash in Pokhara.

Experts suspect many factors, including an engine failure, a bird strike, and poor maintenance.

“The investigation will tell the truth,” said Subash Jha, spokesman for Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport. This is the second biggest crash inside the Kathmandu airport after the US Bangla, a Dhaka-based airline, accident in March 2018 killed 52 of the 71 passengers aboard.

Experts observing the crash closely say that, given the nature of the plane’s fall, the right engine might have stopped working and the aircraft eventually lost the “control panel” mode. This narrow panel, located centrally in front of the pilot, can be used to control heading, speed, altitude, vertical speed, vertical navigation, and lateral navigation.

“The aircraft has banked,” said an aircraft engineer. A banked turn (or banking turn) is a turn or change of direction in which the aircraft banks or inclines, usually towards the inside of the turn.

“Had it been the left engine, it could have potentially crashed into at least two big planes parked at the tarmac of the airport and the domestic terminal. The impact was huge. The plane just exploded.”

One official at the safety department of the civil aviation body suspected a potential bird strike. “What happens when a bird enters an aircraft engine? If an aircraft engine ingests a bird, it can result in engine failure.”

“In such a case, if the pilot failed to judge and identify which of the two engines is the problematic one, it could lead to such a situation.”

But a senior airline executive countered the argument.

“The aircraft has two engines. Even if one engine fails, it would be difficult to climb, but only if it has a full load. The 50-seater plane was carrying just 17 people, a third of its capacity. I don’t believe a bird strike downed the plane.”

He, however, suspects poor maintenance. On Wednesday, the plane had taken off after 30 days on the ground.

In many cases, a plane stored for several weeks or months could encounter problems if it is flown without a proper inspection. Saurya does not have a hangar in Kathmandu.

A civil aviation body official confirmed that the 9N-AME had been on the ground for 30 days.

“The engine exploded. Given the nature of the explosion, foreign object damage (FOD) to an aircraft engine can be suspected. FOD happens when a foreign object impacts the engine. Since there are no proper hangers for the storage of its planes in Kathmandu, FOD cannot be ruled out,” said the expert, dismissing the bird strike theory.

A senior air safety specialist, who wished not to be named because the investigation is ongoing, said both events—a bird strike and FOD—cannot be ruled out.

“Only the flying captain, the lone survivor, and the black box can tell us what exactly happened,” said the air safety specialist. “However, to stop unnecessary rumours, the investigation team should record the captain’s statement and release a preliminary report immediately.”

Aviation analyst Hemant Arjyal wrote on the social media platform X: “We do not know what actually happened in today’s crash, but engine seems to be the culprit. And technically, IF a multi-engine aircraft suffers an engine failure during the takeoff roll, THE AIRCRAFT WILL YAW TOWARDS THE FAILED ENGINE.”

The airline company has been in a financial crisis for several years. Its financial health deteriorated especially after the Covid pandemic.

Last year, it submitted a plan to the civil aviation body to switch to ATR-72-type aircraft and promised to maintain safety standards of the existing fleet until it imported the ATR planes. However, airline officials say they could not secure investment to replace their fleet.

However, the civil aviation body overlooked the airline’s financial condition, which is obviously a major safety concern.

“With Nepal’s key festival just over two months away, Saurya, which had a total of three aircraft, was planning a full maintenance of the Bombardier that crashed on Wednesday to remain afloat. The Bombardier CRJ200 had 200 engine hours left for full maintenance,” according to insiders. Full maintenance alone does not necessarily ensure full safety of flights.

Now the airline is left with just one airworthy plane, and authorities are unlikely to allow the company to operate for the same reason. Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli paid a rare visit to the crash site on Wednesday.

Saurya Airlines had also laid off staff due to financial problems last year. Despite several attempts, the airline officials could not be reached for comments.

According to insiders, poor aircraft maintenance could be one of the potential crash factors, as keeping planes airworthy is costly.

Engineers who wrote “fit to fly” too died in the crash.

Yet in the immediate aftermath of the crash, there is also a lot of confusion.

Another aviation expert ruled out the possibility of poor maintenance. “The entire maintenance team was on the plane. Why would they be on a suicide mission if the plane was ill-maintained?”

However, the crash has shed light on different aspects of regulatory failure.

It was later found that among the entire maintenance team, two passengers [one child and a woman], the son and wife of a Saurya technician, were flown in the plane cleared for maintenance, which is against the rule.

“This suggests the regulator’s negligence,” said Sanjiv Gautam, former director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. “How can the regulator allow passengers on the ferry flight? That’s sheer negligence.”

A ferry flight involves flying an aircraft from one location to another without passengers or cargo, typically for maintenance purposes.

Aviation in Nepal is beset with deep-set corruption and mismanagement.

The frequent crashes have deterred foreign tourists. Especially high-end tourists have been avoiding travel outside Kathmandu by air because they worry about safety, according to tour operators.

Global aviation watchdogs have questioned the civil aviation body’s dual role and urged Nepal to split the organisation into two entities—service provider and regulator—to enhance the safety of flyers.

However, successive governments have not shown much interest, although they have spent over Rs 500 million on drafting the civil aviation bills.

Following the September 2012 crash of Sita Air Flight 601 in the Manohara river, which killed 19 people, including seven British citizens, the European Commission imposed a blanket ban on Nepali airlines from flying into the 27-nation bloc in December 2013.

It’s been 11 years, and the ban has not been lifted as Nepal has failed to address safety deficiencies.

According to Nepal’s civil aviation body, nearly 950 people have died in air crashes in the country since the first disaster was recorded in August 1955. And just in a year and a half, more than 100 people have perished in air crashes, indicating higher casualties as bigger aircraft are involved in recent accidents.

In January 2023, a Yeti Airlines plane crashed in Pokhara, killing all 72 people on board, in the third biggest air accident in terms of casualties. The crash happened two weeks after the inauguration of the China-funded airport.

The first big air accident in Nepal happened on September 28, 1992, when an Airbus A310 belonging to Pakistan International Airlines slammed into a hillside at Bhattedanda near the Kathmandu Valley, killing 167 people on board.

Before that, on July 31, 1992, an Airbus A310 of Thai Airways crashed in Ghyangphedi, killing 113 on board.

The government on Wednesday formed a five-member commission headed by Ratish Chandra Lal Suman, former director general of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, to investigate the crash.