Kathmandu: The government is allocating Rs 250 million for the construction of a domes­tic airport at Nagidanda of Kavrepalanchowk district, at a distance of 24 kilometers from the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) in Kathmandu. The airport is being constructed in order to relieve the growing pressure on the TIA, which is so far the country’s only interna­tional conduit. The money will be spent by the Ministry for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation on feasibility study and preparing a detained project report.

 

The new airport, which will handle only domestic flights, is expected to cut air traffic at TIA by up to 31 percent. When the new airport is complete, the bigger international airlines will dock at the TIA, while the smaller planes that ply the domestic routes will dock at the Nagidanda airport.

 

Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Avi­ation Rabindra Adhikari has been emphasiz­ing the urgent need for an airport that could take some pressure off the TIA ever since he assumed office four months ago. He had even set up a technical team to study the project. The team led by Engineer Kamal Kumar KC had concluded that the burden on the TIA would be significantly reduced with a second airport close by.

 

But yet another team that was set up by Adhikari to study what could be done to improve the overall civil aviation sector in Nepal had come to the conclusion that the country did not need any airport that catered exclusively to domestic passengers for another five years.

 

Nonetheless, the government is in a mood to endorse the report of KC’s technical team. According to this team, the construction cost of the Nagidanda airport, with a proposed run­away of 1,202 meters, will come to around Rs 8.5 billion. But if the runway is only 800 meters, the cost will drop to Rs 5.5 billion.

 

The technical team has said that works can begin, at the earliest, only a year after the formal announcement of airport construction; the airport is expected to take around 4-5 years to compete. When it is ready, small aircraft, aircraft flying to Lukla and helicopters will be directed to this new airport.

 

By Uttam Kapri