AIR PRESSURE: Temporal Hierarchies in Nepali Aviation

Abstract

While the aviation industry is dominated by narratives of smooth, unending growth and future planning, in practice it is profoundly striated and asymmetrical. Through an ethnographic study of how air traffic controllers, pilots, and operations staff in Nepal experience “air pressure,” this article demonstrates how understandings of the uneven geography of aviation infrastructure are framed in terms of time. Nepali airports are often perceived as “lagging behind” or “quaint” in comparison to other airports around the world, and air traffic congestion in Nepal can create bottlenecks that in turn have massive implications for the wider system. Yet some kinds of disruption—such as unpredictable weather—reconfigure familiar hierarchies, bringing the value of Nepali aviators’ knowledge of how to manage difficult skies to the forefront of aviation futures. Aviation personnel highlight and expose severe inequalities in global aviation infrastructure systems while also contributing to them in ways that reveal specific ideas about the future of the nation. Unravelling these “tangles of temporalities” may provide a better understanding of how global temporal regimes are harnessed so as to shape lives.