Turkish holiday

Prolonged TIA shutdown

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It’s been at least a decade since we first heard about a second international airport at Nijgadh in Bara district. The Bara airport, we were told, would ease the congestion at the over-burdened Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA). It would be able to handle 15 million passengers a year and accommodate even the biggest of international airliners. An added advantage of the Nijgadh airport would be lack of fog in winter months, something which repeatedly hinders flights to and from TIA. Yet little seems to have been done to make the project happen.

The urgency of a second international air hub in Nepal was once again painfully brought home as TIA, the country’s only international airport, remained closed for international flights for the fifth consecutive day on Friday, following the Turkish Airlines accident last Wednesday. Up to 15,000 passengers have been affected as there has been no international traffic at TIA after the Turkish flight crash-landed on its only runaway. As there was no heavy equipment to lift out the plane with its nose burrowed into the tarmac, Nepali aviation authorities could do nothing but wait for help to arrive from the Indian Air Force.

Authorities are trying to paint the incident as a ‘one-off’, the first of its kind in the 63-year-old history of TIA. But make no mistake. Virtual isolation of the country from the outside world for five days is dead serious. The tourists, who have been stranded at the airport for days, missing vital connecting flights and important appointments in the process, will not be easily persuaded to come back. In the past, international flights have been disrupted because of potholes on the runway, which promoted the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), the national air transport regulation, to make a shameful request to international airliners to limit their operations to ‘light’ aircrafts. But that surely is not the way to inspire confidence among potential tourists and travel agencies; or to achieve the target of graduating into a ‘developing country’ by 2022 on the back of a robust tourist economy.

It is said that as many as three million tourists a year could visit Nepal (as opposed to the current 800,000) if our air transport capacity could be improved. It was with this goal that a second international air hub at Nijgadh has been planned, in addition to two additional regional international airports, one in the tourist city of Pokhara, and another one at Bhairahawa near Lumbini, the birthplace of Gautam Buddha. These projects must be speeded up. They will come into operation not a moment too soon: 75 percent of tourists arrive in Nepal via air. If our sole international airport can be closed, for whatever reason, for five consecutive days—an unheard of occurrence in international civil aviation—that indicates something is seriously amiss. Potholed runways, lack of basic equipment to haul off aircraft, a filthy and mismanaged airport, frequent flight cancellations and delays—it is a surprise that even 800,000 tourists come to Nepal via TIA.