Who controls Nepal's helicopters?

FOREIGN POLICY   by Freddie Wilson                                                         May 2, 2015
The country has just a handful of private helicopters, which are crucial to earthquake rescue operations. But are foreign trekkers the only ones who’ve benefitted?
In the wake of the earthquake, it became immediately clear that choppers would be crucial to lifesaving rescue operations. Landslides have besieged Nepal, wrecking many sections of its already tenuous road system. People are trapped in remote villages — or what remain of them — while supplies are bottlenecked at the Tribhuvan International Airport, in Kathmandu. “The planning over many years seems to have failed to take account of the fact that hard to reach places — most of those badly hit — would remain hard to reach, after the quake,” wrote John Bevan, who has worked with the U.N. in Nepal and Haiti, in an email from Kathmandu.

Unsurprisingly, many Nepalese began desperately pleading for the country’s limited choppers. (To bolster Nepal’s fleet, at least eight choppers from the Indian military have joined rescue efforts, and Britain has pledged to send three of its own. On Friday, the U.S. State Department announced that Pentagon is sending helis too.)

 “WHERE ARE THE HELICOPTERS? WHERE ARE THE SUPPLIES?” an American trekker wrote online. “The survivors of Langtang” — an area north of Kathmandu — “are suffering.”

Stories are emerging, however, of such pleas going unanswered, as private helicopters initially headed for foreigners, not locals.

A week after the earthquake, that may be changing: Reports from Kathmandu indicate that the government is now calling shots with the country’s private fleet.
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https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/02/nepal-helicopters-earthquake-relief-everest/