Talk about flying off course.
A group of Buddha Air passengers were probably not too happy to leave their domestic flight to Nepal – at the wrong airport.
On Friday afternoon, 69 passengers boarded flight U4505 from Kathmandu, bound for the southern city of Janakpur, reports The Kathmandu Post. However, poor communication between ground staff and the flight crew led to pilots flying northwest to Pokhara – about 230 miles away from their intended destination.
A 1900D Buddha Air Beechcraft plane taxi on the asphalt of Bhutan. On December 18, a group of Buddha Air passengers were probably not too happy to leave their domestic flight to Nepal – at the wrong airport. (Ed Jones / AFP via Getty Images)
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Birendra Bahadur Basnet, general manager of the Nepalese airline, expressed regret for the situation and said that Buddha Air is already investigating the incident. Another carrier official caused confusion over the less-than-ideal weather conditions, which aggravated flight delays at Kathmandu airport earlier in the day.
“There was a miscommunication between ground staff and pilots,” the unnamed official told the Post. “Also, the flying pilots did not look at the passenger manifesto.”
Although a flight attendant reportedly informed the passengers that the plane was heading for Pokhara, not Janakpur, nothing could be done because the plane was already in the air.
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“It’s a professional error … or a human error you can say,” Basnet explained. “Our internal committee will recommend an appropriate system so that we do not repeat the mistake in the future.”
For what it deserves, Tri Ratna Manandhar, former director general of the Nepal Civil Aviation Authority, claimed that a Nepalese commercial flight had not flown in the wrong place since 1993.