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plane crash at lukla, nepal 9-Oct-2008 At 9:46:48 AM Capt_mulch

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On 9/10/2008 james wrote:
>easy captain....flying from Kathmandu to Lukla & the Lukla airport itself
>is not for the faint hearted. There are only ever very short windows of
>flying weather to get in & out of there. its a wild place.
Which is even greater reason for pilots to be extra careful in extreme conditions (I have been a commercial pilot/flying instructor in a previous life and have had a decent plane prang myself). What happens (and is what exactly happened to us in the Solomons) is that the pilots are pushed by their companies and when things get extremely marginal (as it obviously was at Lukla with only 400m visibility) the pilot feels pressured to 'give it a go' rather than turn back, especially when they are so close to the destination.