A crying pilot caused the deadly air crash at Nepal’s international airport in March according to a leaked copy of the official report.
The pilot had been extremely upset, chain-smoked and cried in the cockpit of the Bombardier Q400 during the flight from Dhaka to Nepal. Parts of a draft report by a Nepali government-appointed panel indicate captain, Abid Sultan, was “extremely upset and hurt” by a female colleague who raised questions about his reputation as an instructor at US-Bangla Airlines.
The flight crashed on landing in Kathmandu in March, killing 51 of the 71 people on board, including the captain. Abid Sultan was a former Bangladeshi air force pilot and according to the leaked parts of the report, failed to follow instructions from air traffic controllers regarding taking the southern approach to the airfield. Instead, Sultan took a more difficult northern approach to the single runway and was unable to align the plane before landing and the plane skidded off the runway onto the grass around it.
According to the report, “He was very much under stress due to this particular issue. This mistrust and stress led him to continuously smoke in the cockpit and also suffer an emotional breakdown several times during the flight,”. Also stated in the leaked report seen by news agency Reuters, “The captain was ‘crying and sneezing’ on several occasions during the flight,” as detailed in the recordings.
The ceo of US-Bangla Airlines, Imran Asif told Reuters “The official report has not been published or released. I don’t know what evidence they are talking about.”
