International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) initiates air safety audit in Nepal from today (4th July 2017) as two-member expert team from the organization arrived Nepal on Sunday to evaluate the safety practices in aviation industry of Nepal.
Spokesperson of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) Birendra Prasad Shrestha said, “Two members each from Flight Operation and Airworthiness Department of ICAO have arrived Nepal to conduct air safety audit. Starting from today the team from ICAO along with officials from flight safety standards department will work on the audit process till this Friday.” The team will prepare documentation and visit random sites such as Airline Company, airport infrastructures and so on to evaluate aviation safety implementation and execution.
Mostly, the ICAO experts will audit four critical elements of aviation safety which are flight operations, airworthiness, organization and legislation. The air safety audit will be completed on 11th July and the report will be dispatched by ICAO later after the detail evaluation however; preliminary report is expected to arrive in September.
Nepal’s aviation safety practices have been questioned frequently by international aviation organizations. Airlines in Nepal still hold European Union (EU) ban to fly Europe as EU positioned all 18 Nepali air carriers from flying into the EU airspace after Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) botched to rectify safety inadequacies. Soon after the ban, two fatal aircraft crashes stunned the aviation industry of Nepal which took life of three aviation professionals and produced irrevocable loss.
Among other Asian countries, Nepal showed a poor performance in strong implementation of aviation safety measures over past years. This time CAAN is hopeful that the Nepal’s aviation safety approach will be reinstated but for that we need to wait for the reveal of report from ICAO.
