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Kathmandu,Saturday January 08, 2000 Paush 24th, 2056.
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Ensure
air safety
It took a surprise
check headed by minister for Tourism and Civil Aviation at Tribhuvan
International Airport to ground three domestic aircraft. If anything,
the result of the check, even if intended as a publicity stunt,
reveals how lax aircraft maintenance at TIA is. It proves correct the
allegation that TIA allows domestic flights without first ensuring the
air worthiness of aircraft. No wonder, with such an attitude towards
air safety, air crashes, especially of domestic flights, are on the
rise.
Apart from the
grounding of the three aircraft, planes belonging to private domestic
airlines were not allowed to take off until they had corrected the
errors that were detected. Some RNAC staff who had overloaded an
aircraft well beyond the carrying capacity also got the axe. The moot
point of all this is that such carelessness with regard to the safety
of passengers cannot be allowed to continue. It is the job of the
Civil Aviation Authority to ensure that planes which do not fulfil the
requirements of air safety stay grounded. Private airlines as well as
RNAC must also be well monitored to ascertain that they conform with
air safety regulations. Action, including the revoking of license to
operate air service must be taken against those airlines that do not
comply with the rules. This is the least the government can do to
ensure the safety of passengers.
Surprise checks are
good but only as far as they go. They are not in themselves sufficient
to ensure safe air travel on a regular basis. What is needed is strict
implementation of rules. If this has not been the case so far then it
is because so far the civil aviation authority has itself not been
particular about air safety. The numerous airlines that have appeared
in recent times also cannot evade responsibility. For clearly, by not
complying with even the basic safety rules, they have endangered the
lives of air passengers. It certainly would not be too far fetched to
relate the increasing frequency of air accidents—mainly involving
domestic flights and aircraft belonging to private airlines—to the
dismal level of maintenance and laxity among officials responsible for
authorising the flights.
It is this aspect of
the problem that the Civil Aviation Authority must address immediately
because in air travel, safety must always be the prime concern. In
this regard, the minister’s surprise visit to the domestic flight
section of TIA is indeed an eye opener. Since the minister has now
seen the state of the domestic sector flights for himself, it is to be
hoped that measures to ensure air worthiness of aircraft as well as
the safety of passengers will be forthcoming sooner than later. We
certainly hope that ministers are not taking extra pains to go on
surprise checks only because TIA has made international headlines in
recent days. For checks or no checks, aircraft must be fully fit to
fly before they are allowed to take off. It is a pity that the
minister had to go on a publicised "surprise" check to
expose the deficiencies in the way his own department functions. But
the net result of this should be greater flight safety in Nepal,
otherwise the visit will rightly be labelled a publicity gimmick and
nothing more.
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