How Not to Run an Airline: The 2024 Saurya Airlines CRJ-200 crash

On the 24th of July 2024, a regional jet plunged to the ground and exploded in flames seconds after takeoff from Kathmandu, Nepal, killing 18 people and leaving the captain as the sole survivor. The accident devastated the tiny airline, which not only lost one of just two operational aircraft, also nearly half its managerial staff, five of whom were on the plane. But none of them should have been there, because this wasn’t a passenger flight — in fact, it was ferry flight intended to relocate the aircraft, which had not flown in 34 days, to the city of Pokhara for maintenance. Carrying passengers on a ferry flight is unambiguously illegal. But that was just the tip of an iceberg of negligence — including several outlandish regulatory violations — that has been only partially revealed by the release of the investigation commission’s final report, one year after the crash.

Following the 2023 crash of Yeti Airlines flight 691, I wrote an article analyzing that accident in the broader context of Nepal’s poor safety record, which has made it one of the most dangerous places to fly. Now, the Saurya Airlines crash in Kathmandu has again highlighted the same issues that come up over and over in Nepalese accidents, and I don’t just mean the harsh terrain and bad weather — because this accident had nothing to do with environmental factors, and much more to do with the airline’s complete disregard for safety at every level. But it’s very difficult to determine the root cause of that disregard, in large part because Nepal lacks an independent accident investigation agency willing to pursue every lead. The following story of brazen negligence, incompetent operation, and glaring investigative omissions perfectly illustrates why that needs to change.

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