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Note from Jonah: This is the continuation of a photo series from the Great Himalayan Mountain Range. The photos document a journey by car, foot, boat, plane and elephant from Tibet to Nepal.

You’d think I would be comfortable traveling by air by now. This year alone I’ve taken over 50 flights. However, for some reason I’ve developed a quasi illegitimate fear of flying this year. While I’ve been getting anxious and nervous on small planes, during a flight in Nepal I noticed my fear was nothing compared to the man sitting next to me.

After being trapped by a landslide attempting to get from Pokhara to Katmandu, in order to get a flight back to Beijing I hopped in a small plane that hugged the Himalayan wall. The plane was small enough the cockpit and passenger area was not split into two areas. This is the type of plane where they need to rearrange where people sit if too many big people are on one side of the single seat rows.

To make things more scary, since there is no door or division between you and the pilots, you can actually see what they are seeing as you fly; which, during the monsoon season in the Himalayan is quite scary. You are seeing thick fog and clouds and then every couple minutes, a break in the clouds opens up to let you see a 25,000 foot tall mountain.

While trying to remain calm, I noticed the man’s hand next to me gripping his seat tightly. Trying to make him and myself feel more comfortable as the plane shook next to the mammoth mountains he explained to me his trepidation.

Frenchman Xavier Argemi and his traveling companion had tickets on an Agni Air flight to Lukla airport in the Everest region days before. The two young French doctors had been trying to get to Lukla for days and flights had been continually cancled due to turbulent weather. On the morning of their flight, they found out the plane was approved for takeoff.

But, at the last minute they decided to skip the trip.

Hours later, the Agni Air flight crashed killing all on board. The New York Times reported:

KATMANDU, Nepal — Fourteen people, including four Americans, died Tuesday in Nepal when their plane crashed in inclement weather, after a failed attempt to reach a popular destination for touring hikers near Mount Everest, according to Nepali officials. The three-member flight crew also died in the crash, as did five Nepali passengers, a British passenger and a passenger from Japan.

So why did the French duo decide to skip the trip that morning? Perhaps an awkward moment traveling companions sometimes share when you want to make sure you both have the same plan, but can’t tell what the other person is thinking. Perhaps it was simply a moment of divine intervention — but both the French men tried to read into the other, and had thought that the other one didn’t feel up for the trip.

Secretly however, they both really wanted to go. Trying to be sensitive to each others emotions, both agreed not to get on the plane, thinking they were doing the other a favor. It wasn’t until after the crash did they discuss their decision and find this out.

Days later I’m sitting next to one of these two lucky travelers on a 23 minute plane ride, in a 16 seat plane that’s shaking violently next to the tallest mountains in the world. This is when I regretted having watched Final Destination years before.

If you are unfamiliar with the cinematic masterpiece Final Destination — some kids get off of a plane minutes before takeoff after a student has a premonition of a deadly crash. The crash happens killing all who didn’t get off the plane. However, the grim reaper then proceeds to hunt down all the students who narrowly evaded death’s icy hand by killing them all in the most gory ways as possible, usually with as little clothing as possible and as many cheesy one liners as possible.

The directors of this movie thought it was so good, they should make more. Final Destination 2 (2003), Final Destination 3 (2006) and The Final Destination in 3D (2009) all follow the same plot line to a T.

Fortunately, the plane landed and les amis and myself all went our separate ways, thankful to have landed in one piece.

I’d like to quickly point out here to all American airlines — even in a country as poor as Nepal, on a plane ride that is only 23 minutes, where the plane is not big enough to stand up straight in — you still get cabin service multiple times with free snacks and beverages!

Also note worthy was the remarkably impressive security measures taken at the Pokhara airport. I bought my plane ticket about 30 minutes before the plane was supposed to take off. After purchasing it over the phone, a boy on a bike shows up 5 minutes later with a paper ticket. Ten minutes later I’m in the airport where there is no ID or passport check and also no metal detector before boarding the plane. Instead, they separate males and females and and bring you into small telephone sized booths and physically search everyone individually. Then everyone waits in the same room until your plane shows up at which point everyone just meanders out to the runway and boards the plane.

This experience certainly didn’t help my new found fear of flying.

Flying thoughts from China

Without a doubt, my newly acquired fear of flying is more of a China thing. And even though the flight attendants lead passengers on the planes to do in-flight exercises together, I find flights in China to consistently be more turbulent than in other places in the world. And knowing that a good portion of these pilots learned how to fly planes, using taxi cabs — I may have good reason. In 2009, AFP reported:

BEIJING (AFP) – China said Monday it was investigating its commercial pilots’ qualifications amid revelations more than 200 of them lied on their resumes.

The probe comes after 42 people died on August 24 when a Brazilian-made jet flown by Henan Airlines crashed at a small airport in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province. Fifty-four passengers and crew survived the crash, in which the plane missed the runway, sparking speculation that pilot error was to blame. The investigation into qualifications was launched by the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), the country’s aviation regulator, the central government’s news website said.

Between 2008 and 2009, the resumes of more than 200 Chinese commercial pilots were found to have been falsified, the report said, with some of them embellishing their flying histories.

So you are in a bumpy plane that looks like it was built in the 1920’s. At times of turbulence the plane is seemingly dropping hundreds of feet at a time. Overhead compartments, empty seats and tray tables seem to be generally more shaky than those that you are used to. The faint smell of cigarette smoke seems to be coming from the cockpit. Then, you find out that lots of pilots are lying on their resumes. But wait – it gets worse. Not only are pilots lying about their flying experience, the airlines have let them continue to fly planes, reports the Irish Times:

Chinese pilots who had lied about their flying experience have been allowed to return to work after they took remedial action to make up their hours, according to the country’s aviation watchdog. Chinese media reported this month that an inquiry in 2008 had found about 200 pilots had falsified elements of their resumés. The Civil Aviation Administration of China said they had found 192 pilots whose “flying experience to different degrees did not accord with reality”.

Some had their licenses revoked, but others were given the chance to retrain and had been allowed to fly once more, the regulator said in a statement on its website earlier this week.

“Those pilots given compulsory retraining were, after a thorough inspection of their qualifications, allowed to resume their posts,” it said, without naming the airlines involved or how many pilots had been allowed back to work.

Following the incident, the regulator said it had tightened procedures to ensure the problem would not happen again, and that it would not tolerate such falsification. The official Xinhua news agency said that with the rapid expansion of the aviation sector in China, “airlines turn a blind eye to fake records since they are happy to see more pilots certified by the administrative agency”.

So essentially, pilots lied about their flying experience, were then caught in their lie — but since they had been flying for so long and had completed their flight hours post initial lie, they were allowed to continue operating planes.

Happy flying.

Road Trip on the Himalayan Shelf: If you’re just joining now, here’s what you’ve missed:

1. Road trip on the Himalayan Shelf
2. Lhasa: City of Sunlight, City in the Sky
3. In Tibet, People’s Liberation Army (mostly) out of site, but not out of mind
4. Attn: Crayola — a new color for you — Tibetan Blue
5. Tibetan Cloudscapes
6. Tibetan Prayer Flags Littering Roof of the World
7. Should you pay for photos? The ethics of travel photography
8. 29 Minutes and 15 Seconds on Mount Everest
9. Desertification stretching from Inner Mongolia to Tibet
10. ‘The journey not the arrival matters’
11. Namaste and welcome to Nepal
12. Kathmandu: The greatest place on earth to get lost
13. Kathmandu: Full of mystery, culture, history — and trash
14. ‘A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles’
15. Who has the strongest necks in the world?
16. Hey hey, they’re some monkeys
17. After the Himalayan: The Terai
18. Watch where you step: Chitwan National Park
19. At the end of the road: Pokhara
20. Final Destination 8 (in 3D): The luckiest travelers in the world
21. Tibet to Nepal: ‘The Journey Not the Arrival Matters’