Yak Tales and Takes

    Photo: Jeffrey Surianto  With every change in government, often several times, during the tenure of a relatively longer lived government, any number of revival, rescue, and resurgence plans for the National Carrier have been put forward. Now, with a new government that could potentially complete its mandated five-year term; the first in generational memory, talk is rife about what direction any plan for Nepal's venerable and mismanaged National Carrier should take. In fact, the newly appointed Executive Chairman is on record saying he would work to make the carrier debt-free in three years. Whether this is a necessary or even desirable outcome is debatable, but for now it is the only plan on the table. As with many Government of Nepal owned entities, the National Carrier is severely under capitalized, poorly managed with a disproportionate debt-equity ratio stemming from GON guaranteed debts and loud scandals, and the GON as owner has exercised little or zero oversigh...

 Just to be clear. The new Pokhara Regional International Airport, whatever that means, should never have been built. An eight lane Express-way replete with tunnels et al, linking Pokhara to the newly built Bhairahawa International Airport would have served everyone, including the Nepali economy, much better. That the Chinese stuffed this project down the Government of Nepal’s throat is no secret and much will be said and written about that modus operandi well into the future. Which brings us to Bhairahawa International. That the Asian Development Bank approved loans based on assumptions about concessions that India would make to show their neighborliness is going to be taught in classrooms for a long time. So, now that we have them, what do we do with them? Two spanking new airports and no international flights to anywhere. One could say, “Let’s go look at the business plans again”. But I think if these existed someone would have dusted them off and taken a look by now. Or we co...

 The first flight into Kathmandu’s Gauchar Airport, a Douglas DC-3 ‘Dakota’ landed in 1949 only thirty-five years after the first EVER commercial flight took place in the United States of America. And that first flight, whether born of the romance of travel or bearing VIPs projecting their importance, fired up the Nepali imagination. In a country of jungles, rivers, hills, mountains, and foot trails that formed the ‘highway system’, and even now described as inaccessible, the aero plane offered up undreamt-of possibilities. Air travel would open Nepal to the outside world in the late fifties and the far-flung Nepali cities, – often several days’ travel-time away – would thrum to the sound of the ‘Dakotas’. At the forefront of this amazing transformation would be Royal Nepal Airlines or RA. –the sometimes venerated, but often vilified, National Carrier of Nepal. Development of Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) planes like the Pilatus PC-6 ‘Porter’ and the De Havilland DHC-6 ‘Twi...