January 21: The European Union (EU) has put off its plan of undertaking an on-site evaluation of Nepal’s aviation sector.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said that the planned visit of EU's technical team has been postponed for the time being.    
Issuing a joint statement on Friday, Director-General of CAAN Pradeep Adhikari and EU's Ambassador to Nepal Nona Deprez said that the scheduled Nepal visit of the on-site evaluation team has been put off for now.    
According to CAAN Spokesperson Jagannath Niraula, EU's Nepal visit has been put off on mutual agreement as the human resource of the CAAN has to be deployed to investigate the crash of the Yeti Airlines plane in Pokhara on January 15.    
Earlier on October, a team of the EU had undertaken a study of the aviation safety of Nepal and drew a conclusion that notable progress was made in aviation safety. The team had returned with a decision to send another team to carry out an on-site evaluation of the aviation safety of Nepal.    
In the statement, the EU has clarified that it would continue its support to Nepal for aviation safety. EU had blacklisted Nepal in its air safety list since 2013 citing safety concners. Nepal has made several efforts to get itself removed from the blacklist.    
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)'s recent audit has assessed Nepal's aviation safety compliance rate to be 70.1 percent, which is above the global average. -- RSS