Corporation ship grounded for 86 days, undergoing repairs in Israel

There is a record of airline operators making a profit of at least 10 lakh rupees after deducting all expenses even for the shortest distance two-way flight. The ship was also grounded in Kathmandu for 44 days before being sent to Israel 42 days ago.

'There are 11 daily flights from Nepal to New Delhi and Kathmandu, the nearest capital of India,' said a board of directors source of the corporation. One flight has been cut for three months due to lack of aircraft. This route used to make a profit of up to 10 lakhs at a time. The profit of long distance flights reaches up to 50 lakh rupees. But our ship is anchored in Israel. Tourism Minister Sudan Kirati doesn't care if the ship leaves/does not leave.'

According to a source related to the Finance Department of the Corporation, a narrowbody does a daily business of up to 90 lakh rupees. This results in a net profit of at least 10 lakhs. However, when the corporation's ship is grounded, not only has there been a loss in earnings, the corporation is also having to bear additional interest because the ship was purchased on loan. According to corporation officials, the two narrowbodies have debts of around Rs 8 billion. 10% annual interest is only 800 crores. The corporation has to pay around 1.1 million in daily interest for the ship docked in Israel. Even if a ship does not earn a single sukko, it has to pay interest of 11 lakhs daily. Instead, the principal is paid later. The interest on the loan is not waived,” the source said.

According to this simple calculation, the daily loss of the nine N-alpha Kilo X-ray callsign when the ship is grounded is around 2.1 million. It seems that the corporation lost 10 million daily profit and 11 million interest due to non-flying of the ship, resulting in a total loss of 180 million for 86 days. The right engine of the narrow-body aircraft was sent to Israel Aerospace Industries Limited Israel (IAI) on December 27, after extensive repairs were required. Before that, it was grounded at Tribhuvan Airport for about one and a half months after the last flight on November 13 due to engine problems.

The corporation has four Airbus aircraft in its fleet, two widebody and two narrowbody, for regular flights to 10 destinations in Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, India, Qatar, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. However, the corporation has been cutting dozens of flights a week due to non-repair of a narrow-body ship as per schedule. Due to this, the corporation had to lose business worth crores. "Now, whether it's Japan in the East or Delhi, Dubai, the passenger flow is good," said a senior official of the corporation's commercial department, "but our manager could not understand the market." The minister also formed 4 political committees in the last month. Lakhs of rupees allowances were distributed to the workers and misused. Neither the parliamentary committee nor the authority speaks about such a problem. The corporation is being destroyed because of the political leadership.

Israel-based IEI has not yet decided when to build the corporation's engine and when to send it. According to another employee, May Nayu, project manager of IAI, wrote an email to the corporation on January 29 saying that the engine parts of the ship had not yet been received. Although IAI had an agreement to repair the old engine and give it to the corporation within two weeks at the most, he has violated this. He said that repairing the engine would cost at least Rs 64 crore. The Corporation has opened an equivalent LC (Letter of Credit) with Standard Chartered Bank. Ramesh Paudel, the spokesperson of the Corporation, admitted that IAIA had not received spare parts some time ago and claimed that the ship will be repaired and come to Nepal as soon as possible.