Passengers onboard a private flight in Nepal were taken for a ride when they landed over 250 km away from their intended destination.
In a strange incident, 69 passengers travelling on Buddha Air, a private airline in Nepal found themselves at Pokhara airport instead of Janakpur, which is around 255 kilometres away from their intended place of arrival. Buddha Air’s flight U4505 was on its way to Janakpur from Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport on Friday and was scheduled to land at the southern city of Janakpur at noon but the flight mix-up happened due to bad weather and a miscommunication between the caption and the ground staff, according to the reports.
On Friday the weather was not quite favourable for the flights so carriers were making use of every available weather window to take the passengers on board as quickly as possible and take off. When the Nepalese flight took off, it had already been delayed. But when it landed, it actually landed in Pokhara instead of the intended destination.
According to the preliminary report, flights to Pokhara were permitted until 3 p.m. under the visual flight rules (VFR) due to weather issues.
The VFR is a set of regulations under which a pilot operates an aircraft in weather conditions generally clear enough to allow the pilot to see where the aircraft is going. An official at the airline company said, “The weather was already causing flight delays and to make up for the flying time, Buddha Air officials decided to fly to Pokhara first.”
The flight number was changed and the mix-up happened. Buddha Air, the Nepalese private flight admitted to serious lapses on its side. Managing Director of the carrier, Birendra Bahadur Basnet, told local media that they have formed a committee to investigate the incident.
“The difference in flight schedule between Janakpur and Pokhara was 15 to 20 minutes,” said an official.
“The ground staff transferred [on paper] 69 passengers of flight U4505 to flight U4607 which actually was cleared for Pokhara by the air traffic controllers,” said the official.
Everything was in the right order but a miscommunication between ground staff and the pilots caused the unintended ‘detour’. They failed to inform the flight’s captain and co-pilot that the flight’s number had been changed, according to the official.
“The flight attendant did make an announcement on the flight that it was heading to Janakpur,” said the official.
“There was a miscommunication between the ground staff and the pilots,” said the official. “The flying pilots also did not look at the passengers’ manifest.”
Aviation experts say such incidents may happen quite rarely but they do happen.
A former director-general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, Tri Ratna Manandhar, said this is the second incident of such kind in Nepal’s aviation history in the last two and a half decades.
