So it would appear from wishtobeflying’s post that Eurocopter has declined the escape route offered, which would have enabled them to exit gracefully from this disagreement with the Nepalese authorities, by admitting that they had been ‘mistaken’ about the Everest landing; and has decided to play ‘hardball’.
There are two elements to this issue that haven’t been mentioned before on this thread that are perhaps worth considering.
1. That the AS 350B3 is/was foreign (French) registered and had a foreigner (Frenchman) as a pilot and as such is subject to being granted ‘over flight and landing’ approval for each, or each series, of flights. This all at a time when the Government's sensitivity is elevated due to the heightened political tension and ‘incipient’ civil war conditions in Nepal.
2. That the aircraft was on a test programme that took it outside of the approved flight envelope. It is probable therefore that the aircraft’s French Certificate of Airworthiness was not valid and that Eurocopter were operating under an airworthiness approval issued by the Nepalese Airworthiness authorities.
This is all intimated in the statement in wishtobeflying’s post where Eurocopter are reported as saying: “…“Everest High Altitude Heli Flight Test”, including landings and take-offs” as per Eurocopter flight test programme given to CAAN in March 2005.”
The question that perhaps now needs to be asked is did Eurocopter state in their Flight Test Programme that they were going to land at 8850m? If not, which I suspect is the case, then Nepal’s position will probably remain that it wasn’t in the programme, it wasn’t approved and therefore it couldn’t have happened.
Whether or not the landing on Everest took place is no longer the issue. It is now a war of words between the western world’s leading helicopter manufacturer and a sovereign government, all be it of third world status, who up to now had been included in Eurocopter’s list of relatively satisfied customers.