KATHMANDU, Oct 18 – Royal Nepal Airlines currently flies three jets on its international routes – two B-757s which it owns and an additional B-757 which has been leased for a year from China South West Airlines (CSWA). Together, the three aircraft log 970 flight hours a month, the maximum under RNAC’s current route plans.
Yet, the airline is leasing a widebody Boeing B-767 from Lauda Air which has been guaranteed a minimum of 300 flight hours a month. Knowledgeable RNAC officials and aviation experts now question: where will the new jet be flown? More precisely, will RNAC’s own two B-757s be under-utilized to make way for the Lauda Air jet and the CSWA aircraft?
According to airline officials, that certainly appears to be the case. All this raises yet another question: It is whether a new aircraft is necessary at all for the existing 13 international RA destinations in Asia and Europe.
At present, the leased CSWA jet flies at least 275 hours a month, and can fly much more. The airline’s own two Boeing 757s are capable of providing together at least 700 flight hours, considering the present international traffic schedule of RA planes.
According to RNAC’s own records, as the present average monthly requirement is 970 hours of service, the three existing jets are capable of meeting the present traffic flow of the national flag carrier.
Despite this, Lauda Air’s jet has been guaranteed a minimum of 300 flight hours per month at a cost of US dollars 3,350 per flight hour. And this means, paying a sum of 1,005,000 million US dollars per month for a plane which might remain idle unless new routes are serviced.
According to RNAC sources, there is no possibility of new routes in the near future, except a few additions in the existing ones, like Kathmandu-Osaka-Kathmandu will fly thrice weekly from November 2, an addition of one flight.
If Lauda Air’s 767 jet is pressed into service, then RNAC will have to reduce the flying time of its own two B-757s, because “the Corporation certainly cannot pay CSWA or Lauda Air without operating their aircraft,” said Captain B M Amatya, acting operations director at RNAC.
A top RNAC official, requesting anonymity, said even this figure (970 flight hours per month) could be misleading as it takes into account the delays, grounding of aircraft and other factors, like bird hazard or bad weather, that are regular impediments in flight operations.
“The actual requirement is 815 hours, for which the three existing aircraft are more than enough,” he said, adding, “anyone who knows simple arithmetic can understand whether a new aircraft is necessary or not.”
He pointed out that if the two leased aircraft are given 300 hours of flight each, that leaves a little over 200 hours for the two jets owned by RNAC – in effect, it means slightly more than 100 hours for each aircraft.
Statistics provided by operations department of RNAC show that the utility of the Corporation’s own two jets has declined compared to the corresponding months last year. The same statistics show that CSWA jet, and consequently the leased airlines, gained at the cost of RNAC.
When Capt Amatya was asked if the fourth aircraft was a burden, he replied that the Corporation needed at least “three and a half aircraft”. Clarifying, Amatya added, “We need half of the flight
hours of new aircraft, whichever it may be. As for the remaining part, we can certainly use it for training, and for emergency purposes, say, during bird hits.”
“An advantage of standby jet is that we do not have to resort to unpleasant task of cancelling a flight,” said M P Khanal, director of External and Public Affairs at RNAC. “There are also periodical checks like 24-hour, 100-hour and 1000-hour for each of the aircraft for which it has to be pulled out of active service.” Moreover, according to Khanal, the Corporation’s credibility would not take a beating vis-a-vis passengers.
But all that fails to answer the primary questions: should RNAC be leasing a fourth jet given its limited operations, and whether the airline ought to spend more than a million US dollars a month for a jet its own officials say is no more than a “standby jet”?