Airline News
Turkish orders more A330Fs, Kathmandu crash unsolved
March 16th 2015
Turkish Airlines has reiterated its commitment to the cargo segment as it signed a firm order for four additional A330-200F. The first frame will arrive at the carrier’s Ataturk base next month, while the rest will follow in April 2016, October 2016 and January 2017. Read More » Turkish is also reported to be in talks with Libya’s Afriqiyah Airlines over the planned lease of the latter’s two grounded A330-300 aircraft.
Uncertainty still surrounds last week’s crash of a ten-month-old Turkish Airlines A330-300 at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) after a flight from Istanbul. Surprisingly, there have been no official statements as to what could have caused the aircraft to veer left off the runway when it came in to land as dense fog was covering the airfield. However, unofficial rumours from within Nepali aviation circles suggest that Turkish and TIA ATC had an understanding that as long as the airline’s pilots felt confident enough to land, ATC would let them – no matter the weather conditions. Apparently there have been many incidents where Turkish would land (they are the first arrival in the morning) and thereafter ATC would close the airport citing bad weather.
In other news, Nepal’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has said construction had finally begun on the country’s long-planned second international airport, a dual runway facility 175km from Kathmandu to serve as an alternative when congestion and winter fog befall TIA, currently the country’s sole international gateway. As per Nepali media reports, the new airport would be able to handle 15 million passengers annually and be able to accommodate the A380 after the first phase of construction. In the second phase, the airport would be expanded to accommodate 30 million passengers, and by the end of the third phase would have a parallel runway enabling it to handle 60 million passengers.
