Nepal Air-sports Association (NAA) has been provided with the management responsibility of paragliding activities and its operation.
The association has been officially made responsible for management of the adventure sports from Wednesday and now will manage and regulate the Paragliding.
Previously, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) had been regulating the paragliding but had failed to properly regulate over the paragliding operation. NAA had also not been able to regulate over the paragliding as they had no responsibility previously.
The problem had resulted in frequent crash and illegal operation of paragliding activities.
Now after NAA received the authority, the association has stated to govern and manage paragliding companies as well as pilots.
CAAN official stated that NAA had been authorized for 1 year now and will be evaluating their work every 3 months. The association will not be allowed to use the authority and haphazardly and will renew the association’s authority every 1 year if they perform well.
If the association does not perform well then the association will be fined and will strict the rules for paragliding operation.
NAA has now authority of providing paragliding pilot license, renewal, monitoring, suspension, slot management etc.
Previously, foreign pilots required recommendation from any company to make flight and now will have to take permission from the association.
The paragliding operation are being operated as per recreational aviation rules 2069 which now will be amended.
CAAN had previously banned solo paragliding flight after series of incidents occurred which even claimed life of people and had warned to halt operation of non-registered companies. Some companies have been banned for operation.
Couple of days back, the ban on solo flight was lifted after making some amendments on rules and now providing authority to NAA is expected to bring positive change in the sector.
Previously, after series of paragliding incident, CAAN and Pokhara municipality had halted its operation as most of the companies were found not registered and some were operating illegally. They had also used routes which were not permitted causing problems in helicopter flights as well.
