Parking congestion problem lingers around TIA

December 5, 2016-Kathmandu

The Country Sole International Airport, Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) of Nepal has become controversial time to time as it got damaged due to unexpected occupancy. The presence of only one runway and insufficient parking ramp for entire international as well as domestic operations of airlines hub at Kathmandu makes the airport really a very busy strip of asphalt which has to handle a hundreds of aircraft daily and to witness any mishap that incurs within the airport.

The congested parking bay of Tribhuvan International Airport had arrived a lot of problem to the aircraft operators to the Nepal.  TIA which runs for only 18 hours a day now currently handles about 50 flights a day. They have to struggle to find a ramp to park the aircraft in the very limited parking space on the airport premises, which results in congestion and forced the aircraft to be holding for the hours.

According to the Spokesperson for TIA Mr. Prem Nath Thakur, TIA currently has nine parking bay towards the international ramp out of which the first three parking bay stands for the wide body aircrafts and rest others for the narrow body aircraft. The TIA witnessed severe air traffic congestion due to increased movement of larger jets, placing air traffic controllers under heavy pressure. Due to limited parking bays, a number of aircraft have been parked on the taxiway sometimes.

Parking bay number three got established due to sufficient funding from government while the fourth parking bay available for the international airline operators remained closed for more than six months for the maintenance at the same time the operator body for airport Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) always seems to hesitant to hold its officials responsibility for the fright unnecessarily.

Due to the excessive hold of the aircraft because of insufficient ramp it also pushes the Traffic control to the high stress and also results the high loss to the airline operator to Nepal.  As per the ally, TIA’s progress seems to be a far cry as a multi-million-dollar project terminated to meet its deadline to improve structures such as expansion of the existing runway, construction of new taxiways, extension of the apron, installation of new lighting in the airfield and improvement of the international terminal, among others.