The Airlines Operator´s Committee Nepal (AOCN) has decided to cooperate with the government by finding out preventive measures to minimize the damage caused in the tarmac of the runway at Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA).
The meeting attended by the officials of AOCN, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) and TIA also decided to find out the best possible ways to minimize the damage on the runway of the country´s only international airport.
Bharat Kumar Shrestha, chairman of AOCN, said that CAAN has been working hard by deploying Rapid Action Team at TIA to minimize the loss to the airlines. “Its high time that airlines operators cooperated with CAAN to help minimize the damage caused to the runway as the country has single international airport and that too with single runway,” added Shrestha.
Issuing a press statement on Tuesday, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) said CAAN has requested international airlines not to operate wide-body aircraft, if possible, as the pressure of passengers are also low at the moment and the runway has been facing recurring problem.
Saying that CAAN has not banned the operation of any type of aircraft, Dinesh Prasad Shrestha, general manager of TIA, said the airport authorities were trying to find out ways on how to deal the situation without causing loss to the airlines operators as well as finding a solution to minimize damage to the runway.
“We won´t compromise with passengers and aircraft´s safety, but will find out the best solution that could be implemented,” said Shrestha.
Meanwhile, AOCN has invited representatives of Air Asia, Korean Air, Qatar Airways, Thai Airways, Dragon Air, Etihad Airways and the upcoming Turkish Airlines for a meeting on Wednesday to find out the best possible way to deal with the situation.
“We have requested seven airlines to bring in the details of their wide-body aircraft such as dry operating weight, landing weight, take off weight and zero fuel weight, among others, in order to find out how much we can reduce the landing weight and take off weight of wide- body aircrafts to decrease the load on the tarmac,” said Shrestha, adding, “The airlines operators will jointly come with a conclusion to minimize the weight by 20 to 30 tons.”
Shrestha, however, said this was not the permanent solution. “The government should soon construct second international airport,” he added.
As airlines have already taken advance booking, Shrestha said they will come with best preventive measures for now. “But in the long term, airlines will have to find the alternative to wide-body unless the runway gets renovated,” he added.
No comments:
Post a Comment