Newly arrived ATR 72-500 aircraft of Buddha Air is getting ready to commence commercial flights.
The aircraft with call sign 9N-AMY is painted in Buddha air’s iconic livery.
9N-AMY is the 12th aircraft in the airline’s fleet. The aircraft touched down at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) on March 18, 2019.
Along with the newly arrived ATR aircraft, the carrier owns seven ATR 72-500 aircraft, three ATR 42-320 and two Beechcraft 1900D aircraft in its fleet. The added aircraft will help in maintaining flights while previous aircraft undergoes regular maintenance.
The airline is set to increase flights in international as well as domestic sector.
The airlines has announced to commence flight in Kathmandu-Kolkata air route from May 27, 2019. According to the carrier, the air ticket has been set up to NRs. 10654.
Buddha Air will be operating 3 weekly flight on Kathmandu-Calcutta-Kathmandu sector on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 2076 Jestha 13. The airline will be operating flights initially from their current aircraft ATR-72.
The airline will have 6 weekly flights to Calcutta out of 800 total weekly flight of the airline. The flights will depart from Kathmandu at 8 am and from Kolkata at 10:30 am.
The airline stated to operate initially from ATR aircraft as test flight as they have large number of human resource to maintain the aircraft which will help to minimize the cost and expenses.
After successful flights to Calcutta, the airline will be operating flights to various South Asian major cities. After around 1 and half year after initiating they are planning the flight to Calcutta with jet powered aircraft. The airline stated they have been reviewing Boeing as well as Airbus and will be choosing one accordingly.
The airline has been focusing on Indian tourist and basically Bengali tourist from Calcutta as they are mostly travel enthusiast and in 2017 more than 20 million Indian tourist visited foreign country about of which only 160 thousand of them visited to Nepal. The airline has already established their office at India as well which will help them to get their market easily.
