Nepal Airline’s grounded ‘Lumbini’ prepares for take-off
KATHMANDU, 17 JULY 2016
After being grounded for ten long days, passing series of inspection and maintenance from expert, Nepal Airline’s grounded Airbus ‘9N-AKX’ aircraft is finally ready to soar high in the sky once again. On July 07, after a bird stroke on right engine of the aircraft preparing for take-off, damaging the compressor blades inside the engine, forced back the captain to turn the aircraft back to the hangar for repair. The aircraft then remained grounded in the hangar and underwent series of maintenance procedures.
The primary inspection revealed the need of replacement of three compressor blades of the right engine. Later boroscopic inspection of the engine showed some other internal damages too causing the aircraft to lie there on ground for several days.
New blades were imported from U. S. A. including two American Airbus aircraft engineers. Including these two foreigners, one other foreigner line maintenance and two Nepalese Airbus engineers with two other technical officers worked together to bring the damaged engine back to life again.
According to the latest updates from the hangar, the aircraft is now ready to resume its service in the sky after the successful accomplishment of ground runs. A ground run after replacement of blades resulted a lot of vibrations in the engine out of the acceptable limit. Further amendments were made on the blades balancing them and after the third run only aircraft was given a green sign to fly back to sky. The vibration were drastically reduced and within the acceptable limits in the third ground run.
This completes the successful ground run of the wounded aircraft. After this, the Lumbini aircraft is now ready for scheduled flights. It has been scheduled for regular flight to Bangkok starting from tomorrow 11AM for the first time after the bird strike.
Two Airbus 320 aircraft are serving national flag carrier Nepal Airlines with two other Boeing 757 aircraft in international destinations. One of the Boeing 757 aircraft ‘Karnali’ is also in the final process of being sold which has already served the carrier for 29 long years.
