KATHMANDU, Feb 22: A committee formed by the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation to probe the Tara Air crash of December 15, 2010 that killed 22 people has made zero progress as the ministry and the airline operator are yet to agree on who will finance the investigation.
Owing to the dispute over financing, the committee is yet to send the ill-fated Canadian-built Twin Otter´s Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) to Europe for extracting its transcript. The committee was formed on December 17 and was asked to submit its report within 90 days. It has less than a month to do so.
“The investigation cannot move ahead until we get information contained in the CVR,” said Medini Prasad Sharma, coordinator of the five-member probe committee and former Director General of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
The CVR is source of almost 80 percent information on which a probe committee relies to pinpoint reasons behind a crash.
Going by Nepal´s standard practice, the concerned airline operator finances the committee formed to probe a crash involving its aircraft. The same practice was followed to probe last year´s Agni Air crash that left 14 dead.
“The ministerial decision says the airline operator should finance the committee. But the operator is saying that the government should finance it,” Sharma said.
The Twin Otter´s manufacturer has advised the ministry to send the CVR to France or Britain to extract the CVR transcript, according to Sharma. “The committee has no mandate to decide who should finance the investigation. It is up to the ministry and the airline operator to settle the issue,” he added.
Tara Air is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines.
The ministry´s Joint-Secretary Suresh Acharya, who is also the member-secretary of the probe committee, said dialogue is underway with the Airline Operators Association of Nepal to resolve the dispute.
“In all the three dozen or so air crashes that Nepal has witnessed in its aviation history, the concerned airline operator has always financed probe committees. It makes sense too, as the recommendation made by a probe committee is for the safety of the operator´s aircraft, crew and passengers,” Acharya said.
A knowledgeable source in the aviation sector said Tara Air´s reluctance to finance the committee might have arisen from the fact that the committee is seeking to send the CVR to Europe, which makes the probe expensive.
“The CVR transcript can be extracted in Bangalore, and even in Nepal. Maybe the manufacturer is insisting on Europe as it wants to make sure that the report is foolproof,” the source said.
The Tara Air Twin Ottter 9N-AFX DHC-6/300 crashed into Manedanda hill at 8,900 feet in Sirichaur-9 of Okhaldhunga district killing all 22 on board, including 17 Bhutanese pilgrims who were on a pilgrimage to Haleshi Mahadev, known as Draphu Maratika among Buddhists.
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don;t make excuses, just get the airline to pay & make a true decision of what really happened & who is responsable so the victims families can move on with their lives, please, I beg you.
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