Summit Air

Is Summit Air safe?

It has a weak record, on some of the hardest routes in commercial flying. Summit Air flies small Let L-410 turboprops to Lukla, the gateway to Everest, and to remote strips in western Nepal. Two of its L-410s have crashed at Lukla in the last ten years, killing three crew and two people on the ground. Neither flight carried passengers, which is the main reason it scores above Tara Air (27), whose Twin Otter crashes killed everyone on board. Like every Nepali airline it is on the EU Air Safety ListEU Air Safety ListThe European Commission's list of airlines banned or restricted from flying in EU airspace because they do not meet international safety standards.More in the glossary and has no IOSAIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary audit. We score it 34.

Summit Air started in February 2011 as Goma Air, flying Cessna Caravans, and later moved to L-410s. It flies under the same certificate (064/2010) as before the name change, so the Goma Air years count here.

The two Lukla crashes

On 27 May 2017 an L-410, 9N-AKY, was on its fifth cargo run of the day from Kathmandu to Lukla with the same crew. Fog was closing in after heavy rain, and the tower updated the crew several times as the weather worsened. They saw the runway late, drifted right and descended below the level of the threshold, then tried to climb up to it with the gear and full flap still out. The nose rose above 25 degrees, the speed dropped and the aircraft stalled into the slope 130 feet short of the runway. Both pilots died. Nepal's investigation commission named the weather and terrain, the crew's loss of situational awareness, a wrong response to the stall warning and breaches of procedure by both the pilots and air traffic services.

On 14 April 2019 another L-410, 9N-AMH, was leaving Lukla empty for Ramechhap. The captain handed the take-off to the less experienced co-pilot. Within three seconds of starting the downhill run the aircraft veered right, crossed the grass, broke through the fence and hit two people before sliding onto the helipad beside the runway, where its cockpit was cut by the turning rotor of a Manang Air helicopter. The co-pilot and the two people on the ground died. The commission found that the right power lever had moved back abruptly, for reasons it could not establish, and that the crew did not abort.

The first crash is the classic Nepali pattern of pressing on into cloud near terrain. The second points to crew pairing and take-off discipline. Both were on non-passenger flights, but the same crews and aircraft fly trekkers on the same route.

An earlier accident, in May 2013, damaged a Goma Air Caravan at Simikot when a tyre burst on landing and it ran into a ditch; the 11 people on board were not hurt.

Where Summit Air flies

Nepal's regulator lists five daily L-410 round trips from Kathmandu to Lukla in its winter 2026 schedule, a weekly Ramechhap flight, and twice-weekly flights from Nepalgunj to Simikot, Dolpa, Jumla, Bajura and Talcha (for Rara Lake). Its own site also lists Jomsom and Pokhara. Almost every one of these is a short strip flown by sight in narrow valleys. Lukla's runway is 527 metres long, slopes 11.7% and sits at 2,845 metres in a mountain valley. Few airline networks anywhere are harder.

The aircraft

Summit flies only the L-410 UVP-E20, a Czech 18-seat twin turboprop built for short, rough strips. The airline says its aircraft carry a terrain warning system (EGPWS Mark VI), TCAS II collision avoidance, weather radar, an autopilot and both flight recorders, and that it maintains them in its own CAAN-approved shop. The two aircraft lost were only a few years old. The design itself dates from the 1970s, though, and the fleet is small: four L-410s in October 2017, according to the Kathmandu Post, before the 2019 loss. The airline publishes no current count.

In 2022 two L-410s lost an engine soon after take-off, from Kathmandu in April with 18 people on board and from Pokhara in September with 22; both returned safely. A twin can fly on one engine, so these were handled as designed, but two failures in five months on a small fleet are worth noting.

How to fly Summit Air more safely

• Take the first flights of the morning to Lukla. The 2017 crash happened as fog closed in during the day, and the schedule is built around morning departures.
• Build two or three spare days into an Everest trek. Lukla flights need visual weather, and a traveller with a deadline creates pressure on everyone to fly.
• Never push a crew to go. If a flight is held for weather, wait or take the next day. Compare Tara Air and other operators on the same route, knowing that none of them has a strong record on mountain strips.

How we scored it

The accident record (30) is the main factor: two fatal crashes in ten years on a fleet of about four aircraft, though neither carried passengers. Oversight (25) is the same as for every Nepali airline. The environment (15) matches Tara Air, which flies to the same mountain strips. The fleet (50) is a modern-equipped but old design, and serious incidents (50) reflect two engine failures in 2022 in a country that publishes few reports.