Bhairahawa Regional Airport project has been pacing up lately and its runway is expected to be able to operate in 6 months. Honorable Tourism Minister Rabindra Adhikari stated that all the work of the airport is going on together and within 6 months the runway will come into operation.
The National Pride Project airport is expected to start its operation prior to third quarter of 2019 and the works are being carried out accordingly. The black-topping of the runway is expected to be completed in next 4 months and is expected to be able to operate flights from the runway couple of months afterwards.
Although, the work of runway is expected to be completed soon the airport will require another year to be fully functional as completion of construction of terminal buildings and other and installation of the equipment will be carried out which will take some more time.
At present around 55% physical work of the airport has been completed. The airport is also expected to have cargo building in its premise for which process has been started stated Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN).
CAAN has given priority to the project as it is National Pride Project and also it is expected to minimize air traffic of country’s sole international airport Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA).
The project still needs to acquire around 500 bigha of land which requires around 11 billion rupees. 10 billion has already been dispatched previously for land acquisition.
The runway after completion will be 3000 meter long and 60 meter wide and CAAN official stated that for international airlines to operate after the airports construction completes, they will have to inform 3 months prior.
The project was awarded to China’s Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction Group in November 2013 for Rs. 6.2 billion and was expected to be completed by end of 2017 but due to shortages of fuel and building materials and due to the months-long Terai closure in 2015 delayed the works by six months along with dispute between the Chinese contractor and the Nepali sub-contractor, Northwest Infra Nepal, and its operation deadline was revised to June 2018 and now to 2019.
