PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Aircraft down in Nepal 18 dead
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Old 8th Oct 2008, 11:07
  #16 (permalink)  
AN2 Driver
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: ZRH
Age: 61
Posts: 574
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Dani,

well, I hate to say it, but you just don't go to places like this. There is always a certain risk, even if every detail is planned.

On the other hand, climbing on a 8000m peak is more dangerous...
Yes it's a hairy airport yet accidents seem pretty rare. Like with many other such "dangerous" places, it's a question of who goes there and if they know what they are doing. Once in a while things do go terribly wrong, be it on this airport or on 3000+ m runways with flatlands for the next tens of miles.

I believe the pilots who operate up there know their job, as we know ours. Not everyone is allowed up there, you can fly there only after training and introduction. I've never been up there myself (yet) but have studied the airport intensively for another line of work and I do know people who have been, including one close aquaintance who is a 330 FO. She's been up there many times (also been up several of the mountains around it) and told me that while she as a pilot is often more scared than others, she can't but admire the precision these pilots display up there.

From what is circulated, they were no 3 on approach, the two preceeding Otters having landed just before. While they were on short approach, a piece of cloud obscured their view of the runway and they crashed into it, sliding back some distance after they did.
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