Kathmandu, April 25:

The Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) Boeing 757 which was unable to fly back to Kathmandu from New Delhi on Tuesday following a technical snag returned to Kathmandu this afternoon. No sooner had the aircraft landed on home turf, than it was pressed back into service right away.

This is the only operational aircraft left with NAC right now.

“The aircraft’s circuit breaker switch did not work, causing a starting problem. We sent our engineers with the spare part yesterday itself and the problem was immediately rectified,” informed Raju Bahadur KC, NAC director, corporate. The flight, he claimed, was found fit to carry the waiting passengers to Delhi.

On its return, the same aircraft will ferry passengers to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok today.

However, the other Boeing 757 that was grounded at Tribhuvan International Airport on Monday appeared to be in greater trouble. Bahadur confessed the total maintenance work on the grounded aircraft, which had developed cracks in its flaps, would take three to four weeks.

“Our engineers are discussing whether we need to ferry the aircraft to Brunei or get their engineers to attend the aircraft here itself,” informed the director.

Left with only one aircraft at hand, the national flag carrier had to cancel its flights to Shanghai- Osaka and Dubai. Even in the coming weeks, the airlines would have to be selective about the destinations it sends the sole aircraft to.

“Our commercial people will study the load of all the 10 sectors and decide on which destinations to operate, depending on the traffic. The rest would have to remain suspended for a while,” said Bahadur.

The official nevertheless promised things would stabilise once the replacement aircraft that had been requisitioned arrives within a week. NAC is apparently trying to lease an aircraft from another airlines to stave off the current crisis.

But sources said it seemed a difficult proposition as most foreign airlines are currently flying to a packed capacity and would be unlikely to spare an aircraft for NAC.

With this unexpected turn of events, NAC, which has been under tremendous pressure to increase its fleet for quite some time now, finds itself in a crisis situation. The airlines is expected to get a new aircraft in the next two months, maintained company officials, although the order is yet to be placed.