DPA/Kathmandu
The suspension of international flights to and from Nepal has been extended to early Saturday after the operation to remove a stranded aircraft from the runway remained unfinished, authorities said yesterday.
“We managed to prop up the plane but now we need to raise it by around 5ft so that the grassland can be gravelled and black-topped for the plane to be moved,” said Teknath Situala, one of the civil aviation officers in charge of the
operation.
“We don’t think we can make progress on it until tomorrow so we’ve extended the period for suspension of flights until 10am (0415 GMT) tomorrow.”
The plane was raised on airbags and the tyres were changed earlier yesterday.
Nepal was cut off by air from the world for a third day yesterday, as Indian specialists and Nepalese officials struggled to remove a Turkish Airlines plane stuck in the grass next to the runway.
Engineers from the Indian Air Force with the help of Nepali security officials and civil aviation employees were working at the site, the
aviation authority said.
The Indian Air Force team flew into Kathmandu on Thursday at the request of Nepal, which does not have the necessary equipment.
The closure of Tribhuvan International Airport on Wednesday has led to the suspension of 80 flights daily, stranding hundreds of
passengers.
Tourism, which forms one of the major economic lifelines of the country, was impacted by the cancellation of flights and hotel bookings.
“Many hotels have started to receive cancellations of bookings from foreign clients and this is bad news for us at the start of the peak tourist season,” said Pravin Bahadur Pandey of the Hotel
Association of Nepal.
The Turkish Airlines plane with 238 people on board burst at least one tyre after landing early Wednesday, veering off the runway on to the grass. All passengers left safely through the emergency exits.
The Airbus A330 plane, which was flying from Istanbul, was on its second landing attempt after the first was aborted due to poor visibility.
Stranded passengers wait for flights to resume at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu yesterday.
