SANGAM PRASAIN
KATHMANDU, NOV 08 -
Three months after an Agni aircraft crashed, the Nepali sky witnessed yet another disaster on Sunday with a Fishtail Air chopper crashing in Mt. Ama Dablam range (6,812 m) in Solukhumbu district.
The accident took place at 9: 30 am when the chopper flown by Captain Sabin Basnet accompanied by engineer Purna Awale on a rescue mission in the range went out of control due to a sudden avalanche.
“The details are yet to be known,” said Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal’s Aviation Safety Department director Binod Giri. However, preliminary assessment says that the chopper was struck by an avalanche, he said.
Basnet, an experienced helicopter pilot with over 4,500 hours of flying various types of choppers and his his companion Awale were honoured by the Swiss Embassy in Nepal on June 3 for their humanitarian support and important role in retrieving the body of Swiss citizen Uwe Micha from the Everest South Col at 8000m in May 2010.
According to Sherpa & Swiss Adventure Pvt. Ltd that coordinated with Fishtail Air for the rescue mission of a Japanese and a German mountaineer stranded in the mountain, the chopper met with the accident in its second rescue attempt. It rescued the German mountaineer in the first turn.
Both the mountaineers were the clients of Thamserku Trekking and Expedition who lost their way while returning from the expedition.
“As they got lost they had no supplementary expedition equipment to return back. This led them to getting stranded in the mountain and caused health problems for them,” Lhakpa Gyalzen Sherpa, managing director of Sherpa and Swiss Adventure, told the Post.
Normally, expeditions in autumn run the risk of avalanches and few climbers ascend peaks in Nepal during this season.
“Autumn is a season for trekking but there are clients who are more adventurous and want to take the risk,” said Sherpa, who is also a rescue specialist.
Mt. Ama Dablam is a technically difficult mountain, where mountaineers normally prefer to climb for a warm-up to climb the world’s highest peak Mt. Everest. According to the Ministry of Tourism and Civil Aviation, 180 mountaineers ascended Mt. Ama Dablam in 2009 of which 177 mountaineers climbed in autumn.
Meanwhile, the bodies of Captain Sabin Basnet and engineer Purna Awale were brought to Kathmandu. Issuing a press statement, the CAAN said that the bodies have been sent for the post-mortem to Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) and would be handed over to their families.
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