The final painting job of NAC’s first A330-243 with registration ‘9N-ALY’ has been completed and it is scheduled to arrive Nepal on 14th Ashar. Managing Director, Sugat Ratna Kansakar said that manufacturing company Airbus has informed one A330 has been ready and another will be delivered by Bhadra. He further added that the new aircraft will be landing at Tribhuvan International Airport in the morning hour with a total flight time of 8 hours from France.
The new aircraft features 274 seats including 16 business class seats. The first aircraft will fly in the Kathmandu-Dubai route where NAC has been conducting its flight. Since there is a regulation that new aircraft can only fly in new route after flying 2-3 months in the existing routes, so it will fly in new routes only after 3 months , Kansakar added.
MD Sugat Kansakar, Tourism Ministry Joint Secretary Suresh Acharya, Corporations’ Member of Operational Committee Achyuth Raj Pahadi, Mukti Ram Pandey and Nima Nuru Sherpa had visited France to know about the aircraft manufacturing. But they have not publicized the report yet. Kansakar has proposed ambitious plan to fly the new wide-body aircraft to New York after its arrival on the coming days however, Nepal doesn’t have air service agreement with United States of America as per the existing Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASA) records of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and the preparations for doing so has not been started yet.
Our destination is up to London after the arrival of wide-body aircraft but then after New York will be our next hub said Kansakar. And we need to extend our wings up to Sydney, Japan, Korea, Dammam and European cities, he added. Before 2046 NAC used to fly over 11 international destinations but now, it flies to only 8 intl’ destinations including Hongkong, Bangkok, Malaysia, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Doha and Dubai.
At the present context, corporation has only three aircraft for intl’ flights; 2 Airbus A320 and Boeing 757. It has taken loan of 24 billion from Citizens Investment Fund and Employees Provident Fund at the interest rate of 9 percent. Corporation has a proposal of paying the loan amount to both financial institutions within 15 years. The national flag carrier has made an agreement with Hi Fly, German Aviation Capital and American Company AAR Corporation to purchase these two aircraft.
