The national flag carrier Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) is preparing to lease one engine for its grounded Airbus A320 ‘9N-AKW’.
After the inspection team declared the engine requiring to be replaced, NAC had choices to buy new or second hand engine, repair the faulty one or lease from other companies. With these available choices, the corporation is opting to lease engine from other company with estimated cost of Rs2 crores per month.
NAC published Request for Proposal (RFP) on 10th Jan 2018 seeking all interested OEM, Aviation suppliers, Leasing and Financing Companies to send their commercial proposal for the supply of Qty-1 IAE V2527E-A5 (Select-Two Configuration) engine on Lease Basis.
As per the information, NAC received RFP from International Aero Engines (IAE), USA and MTU Aero Engines, Germany. Both the companies have presented lease fare in accordance with per flight conducted along with hourly basis.
The corporation is currently evaluating the technical aspects of the companies and will select one company which is reasonable and effective within a week. It has also been reported that the both RFP submitting companies have proposed to repair the faulty engine of ‘9N-AKW’ however, the required cost is unable to be predicted.
NAC has to spend more than Rs1 billion for buying new engine so, leasing is the final decision by the committee.
Airbus A320 with registration ‘9N-AKW’ has been grounded since 25th December at Indira Gandhi International airport, Delhi following a technical glitch on its one engine.
Currently, NAC has only one Airbus A320 ’9N-AKX’ Lumbini and Boeing 757 ‘9N-ACB’ Gandaki for conducting International flights. Both the aircraft are bearing the flight pressure released due to technical problem of ‘9N-AKW’.
