Personnel stand around the debris of a Saurya Airlines’ plane after it crashed at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu.
| Photo Credit: PRAKASH MATHEMA
Data shows that Nepal belongs to a set of countries where air traffic is relatively low but fatalities are relatively high.
On Thursday, Nepalese authorities recovered the black box of the aircraft that crashed the previous day killing 18 persons. The Pokhra-bound Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft of Saurya Airlines, carrying 19 people, crashed and caught fire shortly after taking off from the Tribhuvan International Airport on Wednesday. The pilot was the sole survivor of the accident.
Also read: Data | With 720 plane crash deaths in last thirty years, Nepal ranks 12 of 207 nation
Only in January last year, 72 passengers onboard Yeti Airlines flight 691 died after it crashed in Nepal. That was the country’s third deadliest aviation disaster in the last three decades. With Wednesday’s incident 741 lives have been lost due to plane crashes in Nepal.
Chart 1 shows Nepal’s rank among plane crashes. Since 1996, 54 flights have crashed in Nepal, ranking 33 out of 207 nations ordered based on the number of plane crashes.
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Chart 2 shows Nepal’s rank among fatalities. Including Wednesday’s incident, 741 lives have been lost over Nepal in plane crashes, ranking 11 out of 207 nations.
Chart 3 shows that Nepal belongs to a set of countries where air traffic is relatively low (ranked 78th in departures) but fatalities are relatively high (11th in fatalities). Other countries in this lot include Nigeria, Pakistan, Angola and Sri Lanka.
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Chart depicts fatalities in crashes against departures by air carriers registered in a country since 1996. The farther to the right a dot (representing a country), the more the departures. Fatalities in crashes are plotted in the vertical axis of the chart. The higher a dot on the chart, the more the fatalities. In 68 countries, the number of departures was higher than in Nepal, but the number of fatalities was lower.
Chart 4 shows that Nepal has/had a lot of private airlines. The graph shows the number of air crashes (red) across each airline and the number of fatalities (blue) cumulatively in those plane crashes.
Source: Aviation Safety Network, World Bank, ICAO
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