Kathmandu, November 17  

After the recent closure of Bhadrapur airport for upgradation works, now the Dhangadi airport will be partially closed from today for maintenance works.

As per the regional Civil Aviation Office (CAO), flight operations from and to Dhangadi airport will be partially halted for one month. As the runway maintenance and other upgradation works at the airport are being carried out from today, the airport is halting flight services for four hours every day from 3 pm to 7 pm.

According to Dhangadi CAO, the airport will resume full operations from December 18. Initially, there were plans to stop all operations for a month during the maintenance phase but Dhangadi CAO decided against it as it would hit passengers hard.

As per an airport official, more than half of the blacktopping work of the 1,800-metre-long runway has already been completed and now blacktopping of the remaining 420 metres will be carried out. Previously, the runway was 1,670 metres long. Similarly, the width of the runway which at present is 30 metres will be doubled to 60 metres.

Likewise, parking area will also be expanded to accommodate four large aircraft. Previously, the parking area could accommodate two small and one large aircraft.

Prior to this, the airport had closed from May 5 to June 4 for maintenance works.

Likewise, the project is also planning to upgrade its approach lights, communication sets and other infrastructure. The project is estimated to cost around Rs 220 million.

Dhangadi airport has the second longest runway after Tribhuvan International Airport.