Six people, including five Mexican nationals and a Nepalese pilot, died in a helicopter crash in Nepal on Tuesday. The bodies have already been recovered near Likhu (north of Kathmandu) but the causes are still unknown, the civil aviation official told Portal. He also assured that the government would set up a committee of inquiry to investigate the causes of the fatal accident, the latest in a long series in the Himalayas.
Manang Air Company helicopter crashed near Likhu. Manang Air is one of many companies that fly tourists to the mountain peaks of Nepal, including Mount Everest (8,848 meters), the highest mountain in the world. “Six bodies were found at the crash site,” Gyanendra Bhul of the Civil Aviation Authority told AFP.
“The bodies were torn to pieces,” said Sita Adhikari, a regional official in Solukhumbu district, the scene of the accident. “More police officers were dispatched to the scene. Only then will we know the details.” A Manang Air spokesman, Raju Neupane, said the helicopter took off “in good weather”. He added: “The weather wasn’t bad. Now we cannot say what caused the accident. It needs to be investigated.
The Himalayan region, where many companies fly to small airports perched on remote hills and mountains, often shrouded in cloud and cut off from roads, has a long history of plane crashes. In January this year, 71 people were killed when a plane crashed near the resort town of Pokhara. It was the deadliest plane crash in three decades. The very changeable weather in Nepal is also an important risk factor, as is the lack of maintenance on the routes and the low level of training for the pilots.
At the tiny Lukla airfield, for example, the pilots of the light planes referred to the landing as crash control (crash control, as if they knew it’s easier to crash than to land) and laughed while tourists screamed in fear as the plane crashed and bounced wildly along intentionally deflated tire down the steep path of coarse gravel. Takeoff wasn’t much more reassuring: the plane plummeted down the runway and landed in a cliff, a precipice it hugged while frantically tugging on the controls, before climbing back up at the last moment.
The stamp featured a still image about the risks of flying in Nepal, where plane crashes are worryingly common and the country is subject to repeated sanctions. international due to lack of controls. The European Union (EU) has banned Nepalese airlines from accessing its territory since 2013. In February 2019, seven people died after a helicopter crash, including Nepal’s Minister of Tourism and Civil Aviation, Rabindra Adhikari. The accident came just months after another Altitude Air helicopter crashed in a jungle area in northern Nepal’s Gorkha district, killing six people, including the pilot, while one passenger survived.
Lukla is the village from which tourists begin their trek to Everest Base Camp on its southern slope or in Nepal, but the recent proliferation of helicopters in the area has encouraged an even more comfortable mode of tourism: why walk for several days when you can? Seeing the top of the planet from the helicopter window without breaking a sweat? In this context, five Mexican tourists and their pilot died on Tuesday, a type of tourism that is a copy of tourism practiced, for example, in the Alps, where the local reference peaks serve as prizes.
Nepal faces a serious problem with helicopter traffic in the mountains, which is purely for tourism. On peaks such as Everest, Cho Oyu or Manaslu, to name only the most representative, the flight of these devices is so constant in high season that even the residents of the villages in the area overflown have openly complained to the authorities that they limit their incessant Traffic. The helicopters pick up tourists who don’t want to do the approach trekking and bring them back to the capital after their work is done, either because they want to return to civilization as soon as possible, or because they are injured or exhausted.
In fact, fraud against insurance companies is vox pópuli: under a medical pretense, mountaineers are rescued without good reason and transported to Kathmandu, where a doctor in league with local authorities signs a medical report justifying the rescue. Helicopters are also used to outfit high-mountain camps, particularly on Everest, where the section of Khumbu Falls between Base Camp and Camp 1 is extremely dangerous and prone to avalanches. However, traffic has increased drastically and the Nepalese government, keen on tourism revenue, announces but never follows restrictions.
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