Nepal Airlines Corporation hands over its Sagarmatha maintenance to an Air India
Kathmandu – 16 September 2016
Nepal Airlines Corporation’s airbus a320 with registration 9N-AKW that made a narrow escape during emergency landing on 12 September 2016 at Indira Gandhi International Airport after defunct flap movement caused by the outer bond of the wheel as the repercussion of tyre burst during takeoff for Kathmandu is presently at Air India hangar for a heavy maintenance.
As per NAC, all the maintenance activities have been handed over to Air India and soon they will begin maintaining once the spares get delivered from the respective company.
According to the technical team, the maintenance schedule is likely to run for a week as flaps system needs a complete replacement by a new system, likewise brake system demands as well to get replaced with new one due to harsh landing in the absence of flap and abundance of airspeed, produced severe damage on the system, however landing gears would be inspected primarily and if mandatory that too gets replaced, if not would conduct major maintenance to rectify.
NAC perhaps is in the dilemma, whether to feel good not to have any casualties or to raise eyebrows to carry massive maintenance cost as the adverse outcome of an incident which will cost an arm and a leg to the corporation.
Brief digression: ill- maintained TIA only runway repercussion
If we seek the perspective of NAC jets pilot, to carry landing and takeoff by TIA only runway is to endure a misery by an aircraft landing gear, primarily wheels due to poor maintained runway surface, particularly bumpy surface and unremoved rubber deposits, is now rising as a threat to an aircraft and their landing gears-wheels, and recent tyre burst of NAC airbus 9N-AKX is the wakeup call even though this incident has pointed the issue of tyre retreaded by the Michelin Aircraft Tire Company (MATC) and ban on using them, releasing Airworthiness Directives (AD) by Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), however the fact about ill-maintained runway should not get fade and authority must act seriously to bar any mishaps in the days to come.
