GBIA to commence commercial flights on Buddha Purnima

KATHMANDU: Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA), a project of national pride located in Bhairahawa (Rupandehi district), will come into commercial operation on May 16 which marks Buddha Purnima. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has shared that the commercial test flight (calibration flight) will start today. CAAN Director General Pradip Adhikari said that necessary preparations have been made for the operation of the airport as the second international airport in the country. He said that the calibration flight will be conducted for seven days. AEROTHAI's aircraft arrived in Nepal on Thursday for that purpose. The HS-AIM aircraft, which landed at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) from Thailand, reached the airport in Bhairahawa yesterday, according to CAAN engineer Muluk Mishra. After the test flight is successful, commercial flights will take place. Gautam Buddha International Airport has the same capacity as TIA. Director General Adhikari shared that Gautam Buddha International Airport has the same capacity as TIA when it comes to passenger handling. Both the international airports could handle around 9.2 million passengers annually but for that to happen, another terminal should be brought into operation at the earliest at the GBIA. The current terminal at the Gautam Buddha International Airport can only handle around 2 million passengers, according to the CAAN.  The second terminal for the Gautam Buddha International Airport would be operative very soon, assured Adhikari. Stating that GBIA was of strategic importance for the economic growth of the country, Adhikari asserted that Nepal's aviation sector made another stride with the construction of the soon-to-be-operated international airport. TIA in 2018 handled 7.1 million passengers. Had there been no Covid 19 crisis, the TIA could not handle the ever-increasing flow of passengers at the single international airport in the country so far. The Covid 19 crisis also slowed down the technical work relating to the construction and operation process of the second international airport in the country. The commercial operation would have started if there was no Covid 19 crisis, according to CAAN. Thanks to the consistent follow-up and positive intervention of the CAAN, the airport in Bhairahawa is going to be operative very soon.

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Model project The GBIA was initially a sick project but, it gained significant physical process in no time. It has become a model project among others of national pride due to its timely construction. [gallery columns="1" link="file" size="full" ids="19079"] The project suffered some setbacks initially. Delay and negligence on the part of the contractor company impeded the project while the Covid 19 crisis also contributed to the slowdown of construction in between. Initiated in 2015, the airport construction should have ideally been completed by 2017. Deadline for construction was reset for March 2020 but the construction process hit a snag yet again due to Covid 19 pandemic that started in 2020. A Chinese construction company — Northwest Civil Aviation Construction Group — constructed the airport at the subsidised loan by the Asian Development Bank. So far, Rs 11 billion has been spent on the construction of runway with 3,000-metre length and 45-metre breadth. As the GBIA is coming into operation very soon, it is believed that the second international airport in the country would help reduce the pressure of the TIA. READ ALSO:

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