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Aircraft down in Nepal 18 dead
Eighteen people have died after a small passenger plane crashed in Nepal's Everest .
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Plane crash in Nepal 'kills 18' |
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According to www.bangkokpost.com ,one of the pilots survived the crash.
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Story on Reuters:
By Gopal Sharma KATHMANDU, Oct 8 (Reuters) - A small private plane crashed in the remote mountains of northeast Nepal on Wednesday, killing at least 18 people, airline and airport officials said. Twelve Germans and two other foreign nationals were among the dead. "There were 19 people on board," said Vinay Shakya, an official of Yeti Airlines, a domestic airline. A crew member survived and was taken to hospital in the capital Kathmandu by helicopter. The aircraft, a Twin Otter carrying 16 passengers and three crew, crashed shortly before it was due to land at Lukla, known as the gateway to Mount Everest, about 125 km (80 miles) northeast of Kathmandu. "According to initial reports we have it crashed before it was to land and caught fire," said Yagya Prasad Gautam, chief of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN). "The accident was probably caused by a last minute change in the weather." The remote airport at Lukla was built in the 1960s by mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary to facilitate expeditions to Mount Everest and bring development to the impoverished area where the Sherpa community, known for their climbing skills, live. Airport official Pratap Bista told state-run Nepal Television that the Lukla airport was among the most difficult ones in the world to take off and land. In 2002, 18 people including 13 Germans, were killed when a small plane crashed in bad weather near Pokhara town in west Nepal. Nine people died in a similar crash in 2006. About a dozen private airlines operate in Nepal. Many fly to remote areas that have no roads, mostly carrying foreign tourists to the Himalayan foothills, including Mount Everest. (Writing by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing by Simon Denyer and Alex Richardson) |
Looks challenging enough...
http://bp3.blogger.com/_AeEq2KTB8Pw/...la+Airport.jpg |
Check out the other end of the runway at Lukla airport! YouTube - Lukla Airport landing
Looks like there is only one way in or out. Go-arounds look a little tricky too. :ooh: |
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... :suspect: |
Not only is the topography challenging, it's high (9,380') and weather conditions rapidly become difficult as the sun warms the mountains and gets the convection going.
I haven't seem Lukla, but have seen Manang, which is west of Kathmandu and a little higher than Lukla. The one flight arrives early in the morning when it's still, flying up the valley below Annapurna which is one of the 8,000m peaks in Nepal. It lands up the strip, turns around, gets rid of the incoming pax and luggage, loads the outgoing asap, takes off down the strip and flies back down the valley towards Pokera. At the time at which this happens it's still. A bit later and the anabatic wind has started, and walking into it is an unpleasent experience. So why do people take internal flights in Nepal? The roads in the mountains. Horrendous, as is the driving, and if you happen to look down the slopes you will often see wreckage below. One road we went along had two cracks on a corner, and the bit of road between them had dropped slightly and was probably waiting to get washed away in the next monsoon. I admit it is very difficult terrain to build roads in - lots of rather unstable glacial deposits - but the whole road travel experience in the mountains is hair-raising, and slow. |
I've done this flight with Yeti Airlines in 2000. We were using the service to get to Lukla to start a trek to Everest basecamp. Basically most of the trekking groups will use Lukla as otherwise you add 5-7 days walking to get to this point. When we did it, Lukla was still a dirt airstrip, but I see it is now tarmac
It's a hairy ride in on the Twin Otter (yes I've seen the YouTube films and it's pretty much like that). The airstrip is on a small shoulder on the mountainside, and the runway is aligned INTO the mountain so you appear to be flying straight at a hillside. There is nowhere to go if things go wrong. If you land short you will crash into the mountainside, and if you overshoot you will crash higher up..... Whilst we were trekking there was a crash landing at Lukla, the aircraft involved had been pushed off to the side and covered in a tarpaulin, so we went past it on the way out. |
BBC reporting doesn't quite tally up with the airline press release regarding the survivor: Yeti Airlines | Newscast
Deepest sympathy to all families involved |
Originally Posted by raffele
BBC reporting doesn't quite tally up with the airline press release regarding the survivor
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Nepal Crash
Australian TV news claims two Australians among those who perished.
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Originally Posted by Old Fella
Australian TV news claims two Australians among those who perished.
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According to the Yeti website and CNN, there's sudden fog covered the airport. Could be the cause of the crash? I had goose bump all over, I was there beginning of this year..
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I trained with the co-pilot that passed away, a few years ago... Great guy always had a permanent smile. RIP Bikas my friend...
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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... 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. |
The Nepal civil aviation environment is one of the most challenging in the world due to its unforgiving mountainous terrain and sub-tropical weather system, combined with high altitude wind pattern and unpredictable cloud built-up. Also the high altitude airfields with extremely short runways have been designed for Pilatus PC-6 Porter aircraft and are now mostly used by DHC6 Twin-Otter, which require longer runways in order to provide the level of safety that is legally expected for public transport with commercial carriers using multi-engine aircraft.
One example is Dolpa: 457 meters of runway at 2'500 meters elevation with a 5 % slope :uhoh: |
Please, I mean no disrespect to anybody in saying this, but something of this nature was an accident waiting to happen at Lukla. One could compare this airfield with Courchevel in France - without wishing to speculate, there is a certain pressure regarding runways of this length to have your mainwheels down and brakes applied as soon as possible - having watched a few videos of landings at these two airfields, it's surprising that somebody hasn't 'caught their mainwheels on the edge' before.
Then again, we all know the risks associated with aviation, and we shouldn't feel too sorry because unfortunately these things happen and in the grand scheme of things is simply the price to pay for the furtherance of mankind's exploration of the world we live in. All the best, Jack. |
lukla's unforgiving nature
I was told by a friend who flew in there, that the best plane to fly in is the Turbo Porter, with a shorter landing and take off parameter, and apparently all the Turbo Porters in Nepal had crashed probably due to being operated in narrower margins of safety.
RIP to those who lost their life. |
Yeti Press Release
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