Kathmandu, December 16

Taxiway construction at the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) has been completed.

Under the second phase of TIA rehabilitation work, the taxiway construction has been completed and handed over to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) tonight by the contractor company, China National Aero-technology International Engineering Corporation.

With this, the airport will resume 21 hours of operation.

Prior to this, the airport had halted flight operations from 11:00 pm to 6:00 am for airport maintenance work from September 1.

Along with the taxiway rehabilitation, taxiway-runway link road rehabilitation, and installation of runway centreline light has also been completed and now the airport will resume its fullfledged operation, informed Debendra KC, general manager of TIA.

He further said that the airport will start operating for 21 hours from January 1, along with the inauguration of Visit Nepal Year 2020 campaign and the declaration of TIA as the country’s first boutique airport.

The work to upgrade TIA into a boutique airport has also achieved 90 per cent progress so far. As stated by CAAN, the exterior decoration of the international terminal building has already been completed. Likewise, around 50 wi-fi access points are also being installed in the waiting, departure and arrival areas, to facilitate internet access in the terminal zones.

This is the largest maintenance work ever at the country’s sole international airport since its establishment.

The runway that had started developing cracks in 2014 had further deteriorated after the 2015 earthquakes.

The runway areas, especially from the 02 point up to 1,600 metres ahead, had been largely damaged and were in a pathetic condition.

Hence, both the rehabilitation and airport expansion work were carried out simultaneously from March.