Sunday, March 24, 2019

NAC plans Kathmandu-Narita flights

Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) is planning non-stop flights between Kathmandu and Narita, a city on the eastern outskirts of Tokyo in Japan.
The national flag carrier is holding talks with the visiting delegation of Narita International Airport Corporation (NIAC) of Japan today on operation of the flights between Kathmandu and Narita. Though, NAC wanted to fly to Tokyo after a decade, it could not get any slot at the Tokyo Airport and plans to fly to Narita.
A three-member team – of NIAC that manages the Narita airport facilities – led by vice president of aviation sales and marketing department of the airport Koji Takahashi arrived in Kathmandu today.
“As NAC has applied for a slot at Narita International Airport, the national flag carrier will hold discussions on the facilities and other areas of commercial operation," according to senior official at the Nepal Airlines Corporation that has last week applied for the slot and has been approved by the airport. "However, the NAC is still waiting to receive landing permission from the aviation regulator of Japan, Japan Civil Aviation Bureau (JCAB)."
The national flag carrier is planning to fly its two long-range Airbus A330 jets to Narita after it has revised air service agreement (ASA) on June 18. The revised ASA has increased the number of flights to seven-fold from twice weekly to 14 weekly flights with any type of aircraft on a reciprocal basis. The revised agreement has allowed NAC to fly to Narita International Airport, and also to Kansai International Airport, Osaka.
Though, NAC has been planning to restart flights to Japan, the process including safety checks, has been delaying the Kathmandu-Narita flight. "In the first phase, Kathmandu-Narita flight will be once a week," according to the NAC.
Earlier, Nepal Airlines had launched its services to Japan in 1994, flying to Osaka via Shanghai in China. But it was forced to suspend the flight in 2007 due to lack of aircraft.  

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