Nepal airport resumes operations after 84-hour break

Kathmandu, March 8: Four days after the Turkish Airlines A330 skidded off the runway and a 84-hour hiatus, the Tribhuvan Intertiol Airport (TIA), Nepal’s only intertiol airport resumed normal operations on Saturday evening. Thousands of people were left stranded as all intertiol flights in and out of the country were suspended.

Over 30 intertiol flights have landed as of Sunday morning after the airport resumed services, the flight authorities said, adding that they would continue round-the-clock service for five more days to clear all the halted services.

The Nepal Airlines Airbus A320 was the first flight to be cleared for takeoff on its Kathmandu-Delhi route. The plane left for Delhi at 10.22 p.m. The TIA authority issued an all-clear an hour after the Turkish aircraft was filly towed away to the domestic parking area at 7.30 p.m. on Saturday. The rescue team toiled for more than 50 hours to move it from the runway, according to Birendra Kumar Shrestha, TIA general mager. “After checking all necessary systems, we issued flying permission to the airmen,” he said. The airport authority said that around 1,000 people were deployed to retrieve the disabled plane. An estimated 50,000 travellers were stranded at Kathmandu airport since Wednesday. Twenty-nine intertiol airlines operate around 80 daily flights in and out of the TIA.  (IANS)