A new airport in Nepal – the destination of a plane that crashed last weekend – did not have a working instrument landing system.
This will remain so until February 26, 56 days after the airport opened on January 1, said Jagannath Nirula of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.
The instrument landing system is extremely useful when pilots struggle with visibility, although conditions on Sunday were good, with light winds, clear skies and temperatures well above freezing.
All 72 people on board the Yeti Airlines plane were killed when the plane plunged into a gorge as it approached Pokhara International Airport after taking off from the capital, Kathmandu, 125 miles away.
Image: Rescue team at the scene
The crash site, at an elevation of 2,700 feet (820 meters), is just one mile from the runway.
Yeti Airlines said the plane’s cockpit voice recorder would be analyzed on site, while the flight data recorder would be sent to France. Both were taken out on Monday.
Although the cause of the crash remains unclear, aviation experts said video of the crash appeared to show 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 navigation aids could be an “additional cause” of the crash and pointed to Nepal’s “notoriously poor air safety culture”.
He added, “Flying in Nepal becomes challenging if you don’t have navigational aids and it puts extra stress on the pilot when he experiences problems in flight.
“The lack of an instrument landing system only confirms that Nepal’s air safety culture is inadequate.”
According to the Safety Matters Foundation, there have been 42 fatal plane crashes in mountainous Nepal since 1946.
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0:55 Black box found in crash in Nepal
Read more: Black box and voice recorder found in cockpit of plane that crashed in Nepal. Airplane crash in Nepal: How did the tragedy unfold?
Nepalese airlines have been banned from flying to the European Union since 2013, with the EU citing lax safety standards.
In 2017, the International Civil Aviation Organization noted improvements in Nepal’s aviation sector, but the EU continues to demand administrative reforms.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Nepal’s prime minister, met the families of the bereaved on Thursday and asked hospital authorities to carry out the remaining autopsies as quickly as possible.
Several badly burned bodies have yet to be identified, authorities said.
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