Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) has stepped up efforts to sell five out of six Chinese aircraft that have been grounded for over two years.
The state-owned enterprise in this regard called for tender bids on Tuesday to assess the prices the functionless airplanes can fetch. The NAC moved ahead with its plan to sell these aircraft after it failed to rent out these airplanes despite repeated attempts.
The NAC had purchased the first lot of the Chinese aircraft in 2014 with high hopes of generating a notable amount of revenue by operating the airplanes. The five planes—three 17-seater Y12e aircraft and two 56-seater MA60 aircraft—however made the NAC incur more costs than the revenue it earned.
The purchase of Chinese aircraft courted controversy from the very beginning. Right from the initial stage after these aircraft were brought to Nepal, the NAC faced shortage of pilots to operate the Chinese airplanes, while the public enterprise later on faced the problem of getting the spare parts for the maintenance of the aircraft.
The 56th annual audit report of the Office of the Auditor General released in April 2019 said that the NAC had been operating the Chinese-made Y12e aircraft ineffectively and incurring heavy losses.
