A new airport in Nepal – the destination of a plane that crashed last weekend – had no working instrument landing system.
This will remain the case until February 26, 56 days after the airport opened on January 1, said Jagannath Niroula of NepalCivil Aviation Authority.
An instrument landing system is very useful when pilots have visibility problems, even though conditions on Sunday were good, with light winds, clear skies and temperatures well above freezing.
All 72 people traveling on the Yeti Airlines plane died when the plane plunged into a gorge approaching Pokhara International Airport after flying from the capital, Kathmandu, 200 km away.
The crash site, at a height of 2,700 feet (820 meters), is only one mile from the runway.
Yeti Airlines said the plane’s cockpit voice recorder would be analyzed locally, while the flight data recorder would be sent to France. Both were recovered on Monday.
Although the cause of the crash remains unclear, aviation experts said video of it appeared to indicate the twin-engine ATR-500 had stalled.
Pilot Amit Singh, founder of India’s Safety Matters Foundation, said the lack of an instrument landing system or navigational aids could be a “contributing cause” to the crash and pointed to a “notoriously bad aviation safety culture in Nepal”.
He added: “Flying in Nepal becomes difficult if you don’t have navaids and puts an extra workload on the pilot every time he encounters problems during a flight.
“The absence of an instrument landing system only reaffirms that the aviation safety culture in Nepal is not adequate.”
According to the Safety Matters Foundation, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in the mountains of Nepal since 1946.
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A black box recovered in an accident in Nepal
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Black box and voice recorder found in cockpit of plane that crashed in Nepal
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Nepalese airlines have been banned from flying to the European Union since 2013, with the EU citing poor safety standards.
In 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization noted improvements in the aviation sector in Nepal, but the EU continues to demand administrative reforms.
Nepali Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal met with bereaved families on Thursday and urged hospital authorities to carry out final autopsies as quickly as possible.
Several badly burned bodies have still not been identified, authorities said.
