The Overlooked Reason That Planes Crash So Often in Nepal

The plane crash that killed 18 people in Nepal on Wednesday was at once horrific and sadly common, one of dozens of aviation disasters in the small Himalayan nation in the past decade.

After each new accident, investigators point the blame in many directions, citing weather, difficult terrain, overworked pilots, aging aircraft. But a root problem is left unaddressed: A conflict of interest in which the officials who provide lucrative aviation services are the same ones who regulate them.

This arrangement leaves the country’s Civil Aviation Authority to investigate itself if problems arise. It impedes, analysts and former officials say, the kind of urgent changes, and strict adherence, needed to improve oversight of life-or-death safety matters.

The result has not just been frequent crashes — nearly 40 since 2010, according to government reports, resulting in over 350 deaths. Nepal’s poor record also threatens to further cut off its aviation industry from the outside world and deprive the poor nation of an important tourism stream.

The European Union has barred the country’s airlines, including the national carrier, Nepal Airlines, for over a decade. If countries like India, China and the Gulf nations did the same, said Yogesh Bhattarai, a former aviation minister in Nepal, “that would be a huge loss for us.”

The crashes in recent years have run the gamut, involving planes of all sizes: Fifteen helicopters, four single-engine planes and 16 double-engine planes. Except for three foreign airplanes, they have all been operated by Nepali companies.