The construction work of Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA), a national pride project has been accelerating lately and the work is going on during night time also so as to complete all the work within time frame.
Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) posted about the night work going at the GBIA construction Site on its social media sites. The work of international terminal building as well as taxiway is going at night time currently as per the post.
The positive increment in the construction work is set to make huge improvement in physical progress. Lately, the project has attained more than 58 per cent of physical progress and is set to increase drastically as the work has been paced up as work during night has been started.
Work for installation of CNS (Communication, Navigation and Surveillance) and Air Traffic Management systems has also been started as various firms have bid for its tender and process to select the bidder is also going on which is going to be worth 800 million.
Country’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAAN) is also in process to call tender for allocating ground handling service at Bhairahawa airport. It has also been planning to commence internal (Domestic) flights from April whereas international flights from August, 2019.
The work to procurement of land of around 500 bigha to extend other infrastructure in the airport is also going on accordingly with Nepal Oil Corporation set to establish aviation fuel depot at the airport which will have capacity to reserve fuel of around two thousand kiloliter is also in progress.
Chinese company Northwest Civil Aviation Airport Construction group has been constructing the airport and the project cost has been expected to be 6.22 billion Nepalese Rupees using more than a dozen of the equipment for runway work and other infrastructure of the airport like terminal building, control tower, fire rescue station, safety personnel station etc. is also being constructed gradually by the company.
The airport was previously scheduled to come into operation by early this year (2018) but due to shortages of fuel and building materials and due to the months-long Terai closure in 2015 delayed the works by six months along with dispute between the Chinese contractor and the Nepali sub-contractor, Northwest Infra Nepal, and its operation deadline was revised to June 2018 and now to 2019.
The government has been prioritizing on the airport and has been working on its completion in order to aid in “Tourism year-2020” to bring around 2 million tourist in the country.
