Last Updated on 25/07/2024 by Ankita Jain
A major plane crash occurred in Nepal on Wednesday. There were 19 people on board the plane, out of which 18 died. Only the pilot survived the accident. The plane that met with the accident was a Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft of Saurya Airlines.
This accident happened at Tribhuvan Airport in Kathmandu. The 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. This plane had to turn left instead of right. It was seen in the video of the accident 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 crashed, in which 15 people died.
Air travel is considered to be unsafe in Nepal. The reason for this is that Nepal is surrounded by mountains and the weather changes rapidly. Last year in January, a Yeti Airlines plane crashed. 72 passengers died in this accident. In the last 24 years, more than 350 people have died in plane accidents in Nepal.
According to the data of Aviation Safety, an organization that monitors plane accidents, 813 plane crashes have occurred across the world between 2017 and 2023. 1,473 passengers have died in 813 incidents of plane crash.
Most plane accidents happen during landing. In these seven years, 261 accidents have happened during landing. After that, 212 accidents have happened during flight.
During this period, 14 accidents have occurred in India. However, there was only one such accident in which passengers died. In August 2020, Air India Express’ Boeing 737-800 slipped on the runway and crashed during landing 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 responsible for this accident. In the 257-page investigation report, it was revealed that the pilot had ignored the prescribed SOP.
Still air travel is considered the safest!
If we look at the statistics, in the last 7 years, on an average 200 plane accidents have happened every year. And more than hundreds of people have lost their lives in a single year. But despite this, flying is considered to be the safest.
Anthony Brickhouse, a professor at Florida’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, told CNN that air travel is the safest mode of transportation. He said, flying at an altitude of 38,000 feet is safer than driving on the ground.
The annual safety report of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) stated that more than 37 million planes flew worldwide in 2023. This number is 17% more than in 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.
In this report, it was claimed that one accident occurs when 12.6 lakh planes fly. Whereas, in 2022, one accident occurred when more than 13 lakh planes flew. If the average of five years is taken out, then one accident occurred when 8.80 lakh flights flew.
IATA claims that if a person travels by air every day for 1,03,239 years, then one day there will come a time when he will become a 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 low.
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 Ministry of Road Transport shows that in 2022, more than 1.5 lakh road accidents took place across the country. More than 61 thousand people were killed in these accidents. If seen, on an average 167 people lost their lives every day in road accidents.
Similarly, rail accidents are also not stopping. There were 48 rail accidents in 2022-23, in which 9 people died. However, these figures do not include the figures of the rail accident in Balasore, Odisha. A major accident took place in Balasore, Odisha in June last year, in which more than 300 passengers died. Recently, the Kanchenjunga Express in West Bengal and the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express in Gonda, UP met with an accident. 10 passengers died in the Kanchenjunga Express accident and 4 passengers died in the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express accident.