At present, an average of 90 commercial flights are taking off and landing at TIA while around 50 to 60 rescue flights are landing and taking off on a daily basis. On normal days, TIA would see around 60 take off and landings of international flights and around 300 domestic take off and landings. The airport operates from 6 am till 12:30 am on normal days. ""Earlier we had decided to operate the airport for 24 hours till Friday. But as the pressure has not gone down, we have decided to operate the airport round the clock till Tuesday morning," Tek Nath Sitaula, deputy director of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN), said. "We will decide whether to open the airport round the clock after Tuesday morning after studying the number of flights."
Meanwhile, TIA has asked all concerned not to bring aircraft weighing more than 196 tons. According to officials cracks have been seen in runway due to pressure of heavy aircraft.
"We have taken a decision to not allow aircraft weighing more than 196 tons as many countries are using heavy weight aircraft to send relief materials. If we do not ban such aircrafts, the airport with a single runway will have to be shut dow"," an official said.
After the earthquake, different types of heavy weight aircraft like Boeing 747-400 (Israel), Airbus 350 (France) and Ilyushin II (India) has landed at TIA with rescue team and relief materials.
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