Senior officials at the national flag carrier said the corporation had suffered a cut in frequency of its international flights by more than half for the last three days after 9N-ACB - one of its Boeings -- remained grounded for three days. [break]
Although the aircraft resumed operation after maintenance works was completed on Monday evening, the corporation is still operating the other aircraft -- 9N-ACA -- under ´load penalty´, which means the aircraft is flying with less number of passengers than its actual seat capacity, since two weeks.
The aircraft faced this problem after one of the flight attendents opened its emergency exit on November 19. “As the emergency exit once opened can´t be fixed just like that, we are operating 9N-ACA with just one functional emergency exit. This has forced us to cut number of passengers,” said a senior NAC official.
Owing to the problem, the corporation is presently carrying only 169 passengers in this 190-seater aircraft. Officials said the corporation would need to spend around US $ 12,000 to buy a new slider (present at emergency exit) and fix the problem.
“We have already placed an order to purchase the equipment from the UK. But, it will take some time,” said the source.
Owing to these problems, he said NAC´s international operations have remained badly affected. “We cannot take all the booking and operate at our full capacity,” he added.
Deputy Managing Director of NAC Raju Bahadur KC said the corporation could have operated the aircraft with 100 percent occupancy, despite the problem with one of the emergency exits.
“Still we decided to carry lesser number of passengers for the sake of safety,” KC told Republica. He said the aircraft is flying in sectors that have comparatively low pressure.
Moreover, NAC officials stated that the corporation has also formed a probe team under chairmanship of Rabin Pradhan, its Quality Assurance Director, to dig out more facts on the case of emergency exit. “Once the committee submits its report, we will take the action if found guilty,” said the NAC official.
The corporation has presently suspended three air-hostesses in this connection.
NAC offers scheduled flights to four international destinations, including Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Doha.
But as it has failed to added new aircraft in the fleet of two aged Boeing 757s for decades, NAC has been forced to cut international operations as soon as the aircraft face technical trouble. It had cut down its international flights by almost 50 percent for almost a month in September after it had to send one of the aircrafts for C-check.
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