Agni Dornier down near Kathmandu
 

Info about Lukla operations in this Pprune thread (crash oct 2008). Serious business!

(edit: oops, see the accident didn't happen at Lukla, but near Kathmandu..)

Passenger / Crew Manifest
 

Nepali passengers:

1. A Rai
2. I Rijal
3. P Bhote
4. P Sherpa
5. Prakash Amagain, 33
6. Captain Laxman Prakash Shah, Pilot
7. Sophiya Singh, Co-Pilot
8. Sahara Sherpa, Air Hostess

Foreigners:

1. Yuki Hayashi, 20, Japan
2. Taylor Jeremy, 31, UK
3. Irina Shekhets, 31,US
4. Levzi Cardoso, 50, US
5. Heather Finch, 41,US
6. Kendra Dominique Fallon, 19, US

@ golfyankeesierra

Hey mate,

with ref your post, do you know of any link to any charts to VLNK - Lukla Operations?

Tried online search, but to no avail.....

Have been to Nepal this year on an aerial tour, however not from Lukla......was interesting & a bit scary going through the mountains.....

VLNK
 

At the moment I did not find any links regarding charts. However, have a look into youtube and search with a few keywords. Very interesting airport! I worked for a while in Namche and had to fly in and out of Lula as SLF.

Do we really need to post the names of the victims in Pprune?

There aren't any charts on Lukla.

The word is the generator failed (if it has 2, both failed) IMC on a VFR flight and by the looks they got spatial disorientation and then CFIT... they would've been IF current and fly IMC regularly.

Why these aircraft continually fly IMC, VRF is beyond me. Completely stupid, add the Himalayas and you can amplify that to the N'th degree. Flying anywhere where the FIS reports SCT GND 015 030 isn't clever, and worse still when the strips at 9000ft IN A VALLEY!

Very sad

no go
 

Japanam,

do you absolutely have to publish the passenger's identity here? := It would have been enough to list the number and their respective nationality...

Show some respect and compassion!

Lukla is irrelevant
 

They were returning to Kathmandu because Lukla was closed by weather.
Nepal is a challenging place to fly, you have to assume that any cloud below 30000 ft AMSL is probably hiding a mountain unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of your position and course.

Names
 

Not chiming in here often, but this last comment (and one along the lines before) touched me:

I feel PC can be carried too far: I might be completely off track here, but, as a guy who has developed interest for air disasters even before staring flying for himself at 14 (as with 12, living at Zeppelinheim - the town of the Zeppeliners with a long aviator tradition, right by the (then) Frankfurt USAFB - in 1958 I got ordered to sort out all the stacked, partly burned, watered, torn etc. DAeC crash investigation files that had survived the war, in order to make the money to start schooling on SG 38s later :O):

For me those names and identities mean much, as they allow me to check up on lives and to rather seriously mourn their passing (I know some call this morbid, I dont):

I am, frankly, fed up to the point of spilling witht he usual perfunctuary R.I.P. comment to the numbers, which to me means that nobody ever gives a true darn about the persons/lives/families behind tragedies (and, for me as ex mil, this also counts for military MIAs/KIAs, be they friend or enemy), I think if you truly feel something about aviation, devote a second to look up those faces in any facebook, etc., just in order to remind you that we are not meant to be system operators but aviators with a sense of responability towards the freight or passengers we are carrying, and to highten the feeling for the *never let the same thing happen twice* idea of the late 40s by connecting a face to the statistics.

We dont hide the names of our fallen war aviators, why the names of the fallen civil freight some civil aviators transported?

PC has go me haywire, but it is probably a sign of the times that people believe in it being important.

So, if those comments meant to incite a poll, for me it is "keep those names coming".

FWIW, ready for incoming,

Rattler

Is it really necessary to post the names of the passengers?

From aviation herald
 

Metars Kathmandu:
VNKT 240350Z 00000KT 3000 RA SCT008 SCT015 OVC090 20/XX Q1012 NOSIG
VNKT 240250Z 00000KT 3000 +RA SCT008 SCT015 OVC090 20/XX Q1012 NOSIG
VNKT 240150Z 00000KT 3000 +RA SCT008 SCT015 OVC090 20/XX Q1011 NOSIG
VNKT 240050Z 00000KT 3000 SCT008 SCT015 OVC090 21/XX Q1011 NOSIG
VNKT 231150Z 00000KT 6000 -SHRA SCT015 FEW025CB OVC090 22/XX Q1010 NOSIG
VNKT 231050Z 00000KT 6000 -SHRA SCT015 FEW025CB OVC090 22/XX Q1010 NOSIG

I don't really think the wind is correct though (irrelevant anyway).
Pretty sad again.

From the news report it is unclear where the plane crashed, if I read well. Is it in the approach to KTM?

latetonite...

Aviation Herald have good info plus pictures and crashsite:

Crash: Agni D228 at Bastipur on Aug 24th 2010, technical problems

btw flying during monsoon in the Himalayas is
sometimes very 'exciting'.

That's a crater in the photo- the plane went in nose first at high descent rate. Looks like UFIT to me.. CFIT I think not. If they did go down to standby instruments, that would be a handful without a surveillance radar approach and limited options given the weather and terrain.

Well I don't think I'm flying to a place where the national airline uses animal sacrifice to propitiate the sky gods (no I'm not kidding). If it came to that, I'd be more inclined to offer up a chicken to Navier and Stokes, rather than Akash Bhairab.

-drl

I wouldn't fly there either. Esspecially when their pilots are hired on status and caste, instead of skills and ability... FACT

Which makes this terrible accident even harder to come to terms with.

As has happened in the past, and I dear say will again in the future, the 'experienced' pilots think they know where they are even when in IMC. But when VFR, and NOT on a published IFR route, well below MSA (in excess of 30,000ft) you're VOR/DME becomes inaccurate due to it's distance from the station. Maybe you have a GPS, as some are being retrofitted in Nepal. But even then QNH is rarely available at strips so you have no true indication of where you REALLY are.
It is a general rule that all strips go by KTM QNH. Hence if you are flying in west Nepal to Dolpa (150 odd Nm away) you still use KTM QNH... and pilots still fly IMC, even when FIS reports well less than favourable wx (SCT GND 015 030 BKN 060) and did I mention these strips are all one way, in valleys, and at a density altitude well above 8000ft!

I think CAA Nepal needs to wake up, get over themselves, and make flying in Nepal safe to keep the magnificent Himalayas free of further unecessary accidents.

Do 228
 

For those who don't know either what a Dornier 228 looks like.

http://www.aviation-radio.com/aircra...s/do228-EI.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ornier_228.png

I'll side with Rattler's excellent explanation. No, it's not necessary, but it should not be prohibited, either, especially with multiple nationalities involved. SLF is a cutesy term, but those lives are important, and probably a good number of us know people who have been to KTM, and may be there now.

GB

As I have a friend travelling in Nepal this week, my heart was in my mouth when I read of the accident. When I saw the names posted, I was very relieved, and as they were already in the public domain, there was no further harm done.
RIP