TIA closed International Parking Bay 4 resumes its operation from Today
March 19, 2017-KATHMANDU
Parking ramp number 4 under construction since long has been brought back to operation from today. The parking bay was opened at around 3:35 PM after the Qatar Airlines landed and parked over it.
The routine inspector of the airport’s runway and parking section claimed that there were cracks at the ramp number 4 and had instructed the airport authorities to shut down the ramp number 4 from operation after the investigation for preventing both the parking section and aircraft from serious damages. Later being alarmed about the crack occurred; TIA’s authorities had issued the NOTAM five months earlier to Nepal Airlines, ground handler of the airport and had prohibited them from parking and loading aircraft at the section.
Project head of the reconstruction and renovation activity of the airport had reported us that heavy load of the aircraft had even cracked the ground structure of the parking ramp number 4 and hence dismantling process of the section was executed. The bay section will now be strong enough to load wide-body aircraft including Boeing-777 from today.
According to the Spokesperson for TIA Mr. Prem Nath Thakur, TIA currently has eleven parking bay towards the international ramp out of which the first three parking bay stands for the widebody aircraft’s and rest others nine for the narrow body aircraft and remaining are the temporary bay. 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. Due to the excessive hold of the aircraft because of the insufficient ramp, it also pushes the traffic control to the high stress and also results from the high loss to the airline operator to Nepal.
As per the officially, 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.
TIA later analyzing the low space had also constructed a temporary ramp section near the Buddha hangar at the airport for the emergency parking. Though having the temporary bay section none of the airline operators willed to risk parking their big and heavy loaded aircraft at the section.
