A major plane accident occurred in Nepal on Wednesday. There were 19 people on board this plane, out of which 18 died. Only the pilot’s life could be saved in the accident. The plane that was the victim of the accident was a Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft of Saury Airlines.
This accident happened at Tribhuvan Airport in Kathmandu. Civil Aviation Authority said that the plane was going to Pokhara International Airport, but within a few minutes of takeoff, it turned to the right and crashed on the runway itself. This plane had to turn left instead of right. In the video of the accident, it was seen that this aircraft was completely burnt to ashes.
This is the biggest plane accident of this year so far. Earlier in March, a Russian Air Force plane had crashed, in which 15 people had died.
Air travel is considered most unsafe in Nepal. The reason for this is that Nepal is surrounded by mountains and the weather changes rapidly. In January last year, a Yeti Airlines plane had crashed. 72 passengers had died in this accident. In the last 24 years, more than 350 people have died in plane accidents in Nepal.
According to data from Aviation Safety, an organization that monitors plane accidents, 813 planes have crashed worldwide between 2017 and 2023. 1,473 passengers have died in 813 incidents of plane crashes.
Most plane accidents occur during landing. In these seven years, there have been 261 accidents during landing. After that, 212 accidents have occurred during flight itself.
During this period, 14 accidents have occurred in India. However, among these accidents, there was only one such accident in which passengers died. In August 2020, a Boeing 737-800 of Air India Express skidded on the runway during landing and crashed at Kozhikode Airport in Kerala. There were 190 passengers on board this plane, out of which 21 died.
This accident was so terrible that the plane broke into many pieces. A year later, in the investigation report, the pilot was considered the cause of this accident. The 257-page investigation report revealed that the pilot had ignored the prescribed SOP.
Still, air travel is considered the safest!
If we look at the statistics, there have been an average of 200 plane accidents every year in the last 7 years. And more than hundreds of people have lost their lives in just one year. But despite this, flight travel is considered the safest.
Professor Anthony Brickhouse of Florida’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told CNN that air travel is the safest means of transportation. He said, flying at an altitude of 38 thousand feet is safer than driving on the ground.
In the annual safety report of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), it was said that in 2023, more than 37 million aircraft flew worldwide. This number is 17% more than that of 2022. Despite this, there was only one accident in which people lost their lives. Last year, 72 people died in a plane crash in Nepal.
It was claimed in this report that every 12.6 lakh aircraft fly, only one accident occurs. Whereas, in 2022, there was an accident when more than 13 lakh planes took off. If the average of five years is taken, then one accident occurred in 8.80 lakh flights.
IATA claims that if a person travels by air every day for 1,03,239 years, then one day such an occasion will come when he will be the victim of an accident.
Professor Arnold Barnett of Massachusetts Institute of Technology had done a report on aviation safety. It was claimed that if 1.34 crore passengers have traveled by air between 2018 and 2022, then only one of them is at risk of death. This means that if you are traveling by air then the risk of death is very less.
How safe is air travel in India?
If we look at the statistics, air travel is safe in India too. In the last five years, there has been only one plane accident in India in which passengers died.
Data from the Road Transport Ministry shows that in 2022, there were more than 1.5 lakh road accidents across the country. More than 61 thousand people were killed in these accidents. If seen, an average of 167 people lost their lives every day in road accidents.
Similarly, railway accidents are also not stopping. There were 48 railway accidents in 2022-23, in which 9 people died. However, these figures do not include the figures of the train accident that took place in Balasore, Odisha. There was a major accident in Balasore, Odisha in June last year, in which more than 300 passengers died. Recently, Kanchenjunga Express in West Bengal and Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express in Gonda, UP became victims of accidents. 10 passengers died in the Kanchenjunga Express accident and 4 in the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express accident.
