Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA), under construction is a national pride project is likely to conduct test flights by the next 8 months as it has been accelerating the construction work of airport lately.
According to the source, the test flight will be conducted for large aircraft like Airbus A340, Boeing 777. GBIA will be facilitated with both take-off and landing at the same time from each directions.
Prabesh Adhikari, Project Chief Engineer stated that the first phase of blacktopping of the runway has completed and the work of the runway and taxi parking will be completed by the next 2 months. He also informed that the construction work will be completed and equipped to be in operation from the month of May-June of next year.
The construction work is going on during night time also so as to complete all the work within time frame as the work is had been slightly delayed and is behind schedule until present.
Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) posted about the night work going at the GBIA construction Site on its social media sites. The work of international terminal building as well as taxiway is going at night time currently as per his post.
The construction of Control tower has reached the final phase and the construction work has been carried out without obstructing scheduled domestic flights.
The positive increment in the construction work is set to make huge improvement in physical progress. Lately, the project has attained more than 58 per cent of physical progress and is set to increase drastically as the work has been paced up as work during night has been started.
Work for installation of CNS (Communication, Navigation and Surveillance) and Air Traffic Management systems has also been started as various firms have bid for its tender call and process to select the bidder is also going on which is going to be worth NRs. 800 million.
Chinese company Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction group has been constructing the airport and the project cost has been expected to be 6.22 Billion Nepalese Rupees using more than a dozen of the equipment for runway work and other infrastructure of the airport like terminal building, control tower, fire rescue station, safety personnel station etc. is also being constructed gradually by the company.
The government has been prioritizing on the airport and has been working on its completion in order to aid in “Tourism year-2020” to bring around 2 million tourist in the country.
