‘Dire shortage of aeronautical engineers hitting aviation sector hard’

Kathmandu, Jan. 25

Raj Kumar Chhetri, former Director General of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, has said that there is a lack of skilled engineers compared to the number of aircraft being operated in Nepal.

Speaking at an interaction with journalists at the Nepal Association of Financial Journalists (NAFIJ) on Wednesday, Chhetri said that due to the lack of skilled aeronautical engineers, errors may occur in the regular check of aircraft. He said that even though the number of aircraft is increasing across the country, there is a lack of expert engineers related to it. "Skilled manpower should be increased in order to ensure the health of the aircraft," he said.

There are only about seven aeronautical engineers to supervise 51 domestic aircraft.

According to Chhetri, there is a situation wherein an aeronautical engineer of the ATR aircraft also has to inspect the helicopter. An expert of one aircraft cannot know everything about the other, he said.

He also said that service providers and regulators should be separated in order to tighten the regulation of airspace. He said that the government has advanced a bill to split the CAAN into a service provider and a regulator, and it should be completed at the earliest.

He, however, warned that there was no need to be highly submissive to the European Union's unnecessary demands.

The European Union (EU) has blacklisted Nepal's aviation sector since 2013, saying it is not safe. So far, Nepali airlines are still banned from flying to Europe," said Chhetri. "Even though the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) has published a report that Nepal's airspace is safe, the EU has undermined our progress."

ICAO's world average compliance rate is 67.2 per cent. Nepal has now obtained 70.8 per cent marks. However, the EU does not want to remove Nepal from the blacklist, said Chhetri.

"When I was the director general of the CAAN, the EU had said that it would not remove the country from the black list until it is split," he said.

“Just because the EU said, it does not mean that the authority should be made into two bodies. But in the current situation, it is difficult to tighten the regulation of airlines and manage airports by a single body,” he maintained.

Chhetri, who is also an aviation expert, said that ultimately Nepal should begin the practice of having two separate bodies for aviation sector regulation and facilities management. 

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 26 January 2023.