By Our Correspondent
Bhairahawa, May 15: The Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA) is ready for calibration flight, which is an experimental flight operation to test runway, tower and other equipment used at the airport.
Chief of GBIA Construction Project, ICP 2, Prabin Neupane said that airplane should be brought to the newly built airport that would be second international airport in the country after the Kathmandu-based Tribhuvan International Airport.
According to him, work of installing equipment in the tower, runway and other areas was completed. "We were making preparations for the calibration flight but with the increased risk of COVID-19 pandemic, it is stalled for now.
However, efforts are being made to find the ways to bring in airplanes and foreign technicians," Neupane said.
He added that a test flight would be made immediately after the situation returns to normal. The test flight will tell whether the equipment installed are working, pilots are reading the messages from the tower and other operations are running as they should.
Aero Thai Company has got the responsibility of ICP 2 construction.
About 120 workers are still working at the site. Due to the pandemic, they all kept inside the construction site, said Prabesh Adhikari, Project Chief of GBIA.
The workers include 20 Chinese, 18 Indian and more than 80 Nepali nationals.
Adhikari said that at present departure and arrival section interior decoration, furnishing, false ceiling and air condition installation were in progress and that works like gardening, landscaping, painting and marking were completed.
"Except for an x-ray machine, there is nothing that needs to be imported from abroad," he said.
Likewise, external road at the airport is under construction but the pandemic has affected human resource management of the project.