Nepal’s aircraft lands in Osaka after 12 years

Kathmandu: Nepal’s national flag carrier airbus 330 (wide-body) has landed in Osaka, Japan Thursday after 12 years.

On Thursday morning, at 2:30 a.m. Nepal Air Corporation’s Airbus-330 (Wide-body) flew to Osaka, carrying Tourism Minister Dhan Bahadur Budha, 95 passengers, and tourists, along with 76 guests.

The wide-body aircraft having the capacity of 274 seats, landed at the Osaka airport about seven and a half hours later at around 11.55 a.m. according to Japan’s local time.  The aircraft’s senior pilots Maheshwarman Dangol and Shravan Rizal are in charge of the airbus.

Thursday’s flight will take off from Osaka at 1.55 pm at a local time and will arrive in Kathmandu at 6.00 pm. This is the first commercial flight for two new wide-body aircraft brought for long-distance international flights. Only on the second time that the airbus flew to Osaka after a ticket booking was opened. The first Osaka flight was scheduled for July 4.

In the initial phase, the airfare for one seat in the Economy Class of Wide-body is fixed at Rs 36,999 and the fare of both sides is fixed at Rs 72,814. Executive chairman of the corporation Madan Kharel informed that the airfare rates may fluctuate according to the number of passengers.

Earlier, on October 30, 1994, the corporation had started flights to Osaka. The flight was from Kathmandu to Osaka, Japan via Shanghai, China. On April 12, 2007, A.D Osaka’s flight was closed by Nepal Airline Corporation due to a lack of aircraft.

The corporation now has flights to New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Malaysia, Singapore, Bangkok, and Qatar. The Corporation currently has two widebodies A-330 Aircrafts, two narrow-body A-320 aircraft for international flights.