Nepal's efforts fall short as EU retains Nepali airlines on air safety blacklist

Published On: June 11, 2023 08:30 AM NPT By: Republica | @RepublicaNepal

KATHMANDU, June 11: The European Union (EU) has refused to remove Nepali airlines companies from its blacklist.

Unveiling the latest report on the air safety list, the Department for Mobility and Transport of the EU has continued blacklisting 20 Nepali airlines companies. These include the majority of private airlines and helicopter companies along with the state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC).

“These air carriers are banned from operating or are subject to operational restrictions within the Union, as published in the Official Journal of the European Union,” reads the EU report.

According to officials of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), the EU authority has refused to remove Nepali airlines from the blacklist mainly due to the government’s apathy to unbundle the CAAN. The EU has long been raising its concern to split CAAN into regulation and operational bodies as the main condition to remove Nepali airlines from the list.

The EU has kept Nepal on its air safety blacklist for the past one decade due to which the airline companies registered in Nepal are not allowed to operate flights to EU member states. As a result, the aircraft of the NAC, among others, are not allowed to conduct their flights to the EU skies but the aircraft from EU member states can use Nepal’s sky in an accessible manner.

For the past one year, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) of the EU had carried out the safety audit of the Nepali airlines companies. Although the EU agency stood positive in the beginning, it was reportedly unsatisfied with the government’s slow process of unbundling the CAAN.

On December 5, 2013, the Commission had imposed a blanket ban on all airlines from Nepal from flying into the EU. Last year, the United Nations aviation watchdog International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) formally asked Nepal to split the civil aviation body into two entities—service provider and regulator. Although the governments formed at different times expressed their initiatives to pass the related laws, the bill has remained pending at the Federal Parliament.