Well, they confirmed that they were VFR. Runway 02 or runway 20, it doesn't matter. CFIT. nothing more, nothing less.

Anecdotal but wonder if it has import.... Was working with an Indian team, all w good English, but certain 'sounds' in English they always seemed to struggle with and often 'reverse'. Most common example (we were writing code for Geo-location stuff) was "Ohio" vs "Iowa" ....the 'Ai' vs 'oh' vs 'ah' sound gave several of them loads of difficulty.
One poor chap simply always reversed Iowa and Ohio....even worse when he was nervous or busy.
It just tweaked my memory and made me wonder about 'too-oh' vs 'oh-too' in a language not native to you...

Thanks for indulging a memory!

KTM APP has an old radar ( gift of the Japanese after a aerie of accidents some 20 years ago. However the controllers were/still are not trained to use it (due lack resources of the Nepalese CAA) so they use it only for information to locate position of aircraft.
This is one of the reasons all domestic traffic is VFR only , regardless of type used, and you will never receive a vector from them.
We tried to upgrade the situation a few years ago but failed. Nepal is still one of poorest countries on earth, hit by natural disasters and political struggles.
Bangladesh is not much better.
Welcome to the real world.

When I trained at Cambridge it had both 02/20 and 13/31, and we learned to avoid confusion.

Sad event. Clearly "tower can we have vectors for a vfr to runway 20" was needed. Or an offer of same. Hindsight is a wonderful thing

Lots of factual information and data still missing of course - some examples:

A. At minimum sketches of the final flight paths from different witnesses.
B. Part of the communication between the older sounding male pilot exchange with ATC is garbled/missing. You would expect some motivation/explanation of some his actions. Could give some insight in the 02/20 mix up impression.
A x B synchronizing...
C. I wonder whether there were two or three people om the flightdeck. The young sounding female at the start of the tapes. The older sounding muffled sounding male - who in a later tape part sounds clearer by the way. And a clearer younger male voice appearing to make one remark.
D. The Nepalese chatter post... Would be interesting to get a transcript of that... @Ps7 could you provide that?

Pilots dont just fly into KTM. You expect that the airline requires the captain to fly the approach and landing. In that sense the PNF role with comms change appears to be the opposite of what you expect. Or, it could mean that the captain took over both the flying and the comms. Which might have increased confusion. Or, if there was a third person in the cockpit, that this person was monitoring the female pilot, who might or might not have been PF on finals.

ATC was not perfect in their comms (from the livenet tapes). Some minor slip ups and a double negative for example. The female pilot appeared clear and correct. The older male pilot comms are confusing.

Mixing up north and south is not as exceptional as some appear to suggest. It has happened to very professional and experienced people. First impression is that a discussion of cognitive dissonance will end up in the text of the final report.

More questions than answers as usual.

The GA field I operate from, in Australia, had a 02/20 designated runway and the owner decided there was too much confusion so he just changed its designation to 01/19. Still the same runway. And I have made the mistake, in a high workload situation, of saying 02 when I meant 20.

CFIT is not this. ‘Controlled flight into terrain.’ Flying at night, into a mountain, on the wrong VOR radial, would be CFIT.

This is not that. And anyone who suggests this is, must be recognized as an armchair FS operator. Thanks.

Losing control of a plane is not CFIT.

Use of 02/20 as RWY designators
 

I line with cooper's info: To my knowledge, some countries, e.g. Sweden, do not use 02/20 or 13/31 as RWY designators, no matter their magnetic orientation. So it seems to be a policy matter.

Perhaps the American phraseology of "runway two" instead of ICAO format "runway zero two" would have ameliorated this situation.

The Eva Air event at LAX some years ago springs to mind.

The communication between a busy controller and a confused pilot nearly led to a serious accident.

Please people, the idea that any airline pilot can confuse 02 and 20 runways is just not credible. From that transcript it seems to me that the crew were clear they were headed for 02 but several untimely references to 20, 02 and finally "02 or 20" by ATC left the crew struggling to keep up with a constantly changing runway situation. I think this played a significant part in this accident.

listen to the tape yourself and look at the altitude profile.

they made several approaches it seems without ever announcing a go-around to atc or it's not caught on the public recording (covering multiple frequencies)

so ATC was most likely confused by them flying strange patterns around the runway making it unclear where they will land.
maybe they were planning 20 all the time and just almost went into the ground somewhere else what do i know we will see i guess.

Australia does not allow runway 02/20 due to possible confusion and this is something ICAO should adopt as well. Obviously this was a significant factor in the accident and may have been the primary cause.

A disaster shouldn't be the result of a simple mistake, had the runway been designated 01/19 this may not have happened. There is an obvious hole in the Swiss cheese which needs removing.

BTW I remember having to explain to a first officer one day how wind direction was given in a METAR so not much surprises me anymore.

No official radar at VNKT.

VNKT works quite well with 20/02 as do many other airports.

Then again, it works best for pilots disciplined, qualified into a somewhat complex airport.

The Turks screwed it up with a new AB330 flying the RNP AR approach.

Tailwind on steep approach , maybe not being able to land on 02 cams as a bit of a shock to him ( too high ) and the circle to land not briefed ? When it goes wrong it goes wrong very quick ?

RIP and condolences to family and friends .

"Bombardier commander seemed confused"
 

According to an article in the Indian newspaper The Hindu:

Even as the Bombardier is on its way in, Nepali pilots of other aircraft are heard warning the ATC that the Bombardier commander seems confused. Speaking in Nepali, the pilots warn: almaliyo jasto chha (he seems confused); disoriented bhae jasto chha (he seems disoriented); and yo kata jaala (he may end up anywhere).

This explains the Nepalese voices in the ATC recording.

Wow, I've never heard of that one, I guess it's sorta like the missing thirteenth floor in some Asian hotels. Unless someone tells you about it, you might never notice it.

Anyway, after listening to the ATC tapes, I don't think renumbering the runways would have helped this ill-fated crew sort it out. :sad:

Accidents can have the most trivial causes, an Eastern Airlines TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades because of a burnt out light bulb which triggered a chain of events leading to the disaster.

Obviously the bulb blowing didn't cause the crash but what happened as a result of it did.

How many of us have heard a 02/20 clearance read back wrongly when operating into an airport with this runway orientation ? I have heard it regularly.