Officials from Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) returned homeland from Brussels on Monday after successful technical meet with the European Commission (EC).
The EC air safety committee meeting held on November 12-15, 2017 decided to invite Nepal for the technical meeting so, a seven member delegate from Nepal led by CAAN’s Director General Sanjeev Gautam attended the technical meet with Directorate General for Mobility and Transport (DG MOVE) of the EC on 19th January 2018.
DG MOVE is a Directorate-General of the European Commission responsible for transport within the European Union.
Deputy Director General Rajan Pokhrel said, “The main objective of the meet was to evaluate the audit conducted by International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), compliance status of Nepalese Aviation, safety concerns raised by ICAO and the information of accidents and their investigations.”
The audit report from ICAO is already disclosed and the Significant Safety Concerns (SSC) raised by ICAO is already resolved. In addition, our compliance rate is also improving and is more than the global average i.e. 66.08, added Mr. Pokhrel.
EU had raised concern over the frequent air crashes at Nepal as there were 5 passenger plane crashes between 2010 and 2012 that took life of 89 individuals. We can’t avoid accidents but can improve safety says Mr. Pokhrel adding that the Nepali Aviation has decreased the rate of accidents.
The officials from Nepal presented all the documents, statistics and clarifications sought by EC on the meet related to ICAO SSC, standard international compliance, pilot qualification and many other technical aspects. EC will review all those clarifications and will dispatch detail information to CAAN by February.
EC has been satisfied with the presentation of clarifications from Nepal however, their technical team will be arriving Nepal to conduct a thorough audit to verify the paper clarifications.
After completion of the detail audit, the EC will conduct an Air Safety Committee meeting to take further actions to the agenda made by Nepal.
Nepali Aviation will move one step further towards getting out of EU black list if all the concerns raised by EC are verified.
