I have since managed to get my hands on more data and estimate that eight percent of tourists trekking in the Everest region this spring were rescued by helicopter – that’s up to 17 flights per day. The symptoms disappear as if by magic the lower you get. Who honestly believes that it’s necessary to be rescued by a helicopter for a common cold? Or thinks that getting on a helicopter is safer than walking to a lower altitude? Walking down is the standard medical advice if you start experiencing first symptoms of Acute Mountain Sickness, like headaches, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, nausea. I found this naivety quite difficult to get my head around. Who honestly believes that it's necessary to be rescued by a helicopter for a common cold?
#Picture rescue scam full#
While there were a few angry reviews by people who felt that they had been pressured into a rescue and suspected a scam, the vast majority of people were full of praise for their guide who organised a chopper to swoop in and save them from a bout of the squits at Everest’s base camp. So were these shrewd brokers who had priced in a per flight cut for themselves.Ī helicopter delivers goods to Everest base camp, April 24, 2018. And they built relationships with international insurance companies to allay any other concerns they may have.Īs a result, prices came down, so the insurers were happy. So they did two things - they negotiated a unified price grid with some helicopter companies at the start of the main trekking seasons (spring and autumn) so prices were fixed. They realised that insurers were catching on to the scam because of the inconsistent billing. The true cost of the flight was closer to $4,000 but the insurance companies were coughing up and the difference was being spread between the helicopter company, trekking guide and the broker.Īt that point, a few forward-thinking brokers waded into the market. Another might come in at a bargain $6,000. I saw the invoices: a rescue from near Everest billed at $10,000 and then a few days later a similar rescue billed at $12,000. There were a handful of helicopter operators and their brokers charging insurers exorbitant and inconsistent rates for chopper rescues. I soon realized that the scam had evolved, becoming harder to prove – and even more lucrative – in the process.Ī helicopter comes in to land at Mong La village near Namche Bazar, April 17, 2018. That type of reaction was something I frequently came up against during my investigation as people tried to dismiss my questions, telling me that I didn’t understand Nepal.īut being brushed off like that is a red flag to most journalists. It had been brought under control years ago. Many of the people I first spoke to tried to tell me that the fraud was an old problem. Those two figures suggested to me that Nepal’s helicopter business was disproportionately lucrative compared to the size of the market. And second, that private helicopters in Nepal wrack up more flying hours per year than anywhere else in the world. But it was two stats that initially spurred my investigation: first, that 20 new Airbus B2 and B3 choppers had been delivered to Nepal in five years. Not long after I arrived in Nepal I started hearing rumours of middlemen profiting from the insurance payouts linked to unnecessary helicopter rescues of tourists. Nepali porters cross a suspension bridge to Namche Bazar, April, 2018.Ī strangely lucrative helicopter business
Some pay the ultimate price, losing their lives on the flanks of the world’s highest peak. Each year records are broken as men and women push themselves to the limits of human endurance. The spring climbing season, when hundreds of mountaineers gather at the foot of Everest with their sights set on reaching its 8,848 metre summit, is our busiest time in the bureau. When I first arrived in Kathmandu in November 2016 to head up the Nepal bureau, I made it my business to get to know as many people as possible linked to the lucrative Everest industry, which nets the impoverished country millions of dollars a year.
Some are even being made deliberately ill for the scammers’ profit. The scam that I uncovered affects them all: huge numbers of trekkers are being pressured into expensive helicopter rescues that they don’t need so that a coterie of middlemen can cash in on the insurance payout. Hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to Nepal each year, drawn by the Himalayas. But when I started looking into insurance fraud linked to helicopter rescues in Nepal, I didn’t think it would end with a government probe and an ultimatum from global insurers that could be a death knell for the Himalayan nation’s vital tourism industry. It led to hours scanning reviews on TripAdvisor and weeks hiking around Mount Everest. Kathmandu - It started with rumours and numbers that didn’t add up.
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