Bad weather covers for pilot error
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Officials found the black box, but speculation over the cause of the crash surfaced long before that discovery. The official line is bad weather.
Aviation experts note the plane was off course and the pilot may not have double-checked his coordinates before descent. He crashed into a mountain minutes before landing.
Another developing country, Nepal, blames the weather for 60 of its plane crashes. More interesting, 80% of these accidents were due to pilot failure, while the rest were written off as technical glitches, Civil Aviation Corporation said yesterday.
“Although enough paperwork aimed at decreasing air accidents has already been done, the lack of implementation of the findings is responsible for the increasing number of air accidents,” CAC chairman Yagya Prasad Gautam said.
Small Asian countries aren’t alone according to Travel Councellors. Over 80% of the pilots surveyed by the British Air Line Pilots’ Association said they had suffered from fatigue while flying.
One told the BBC, “I have fallen asleep unintentionally in the air where you close your eyes for a second and realise that 10 minutes have passed.” About 80% agreed the public should be concerned about pilots flying when exhausted.
Balpa chairman Mervyn Granshaw said, “At the moment we are not seeing it appear as accidents or incidents, but we’re getting closer to that point.”
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