An Airbus A330, fresh off the assembly line and bearing Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) livery, landed at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) Thursday morning as hundreds of plane spotters watched enthralled. The A330, named Annapurna, is the latest addition and the largest aircraft in NAC’s fleet.

The massive airliner arrived from Toulouse, France with Captain Vincenco Termante and flight officer Joao Cesar Vieira-da Silva at the controls. It is powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines, and features a two-class cabin configuration and seats a total of 274 passengers—18 in business class and 256 in economy class.

In April last year, NAC signed the final purchase agreement for two Airbus A330-200 long-range jets from US-based AAR Corp. The $209.6-million contract is the largest-ever jet purchase deal in Nepal’s aviation history. The second aircraft is expected to arrive on July 25, according to NAC.

“Indeed, it is a matter of delight to welcome the first wide body plane,” said Tourism Minister Rabindra Adhikari during a function held to welcome the new aircraft. “Making NAC a competitive organization is the need of the hour, but it is challenging.”

Minister Adhikari said that the government had announced holding the Visit Nepal 2020 tourism campaign, and the role of the national carrier would be vital to make it successful. “By 2019, we will have two more A320 jets. And we expect NAC’s increased fleet will help the government realize the goal of attracting 2 million tourists,” he said, adding that NAC would once again be spreading its wings across the world.

Currently, the national flag carrier has two A320 jets and a vintage Boeing 757. The corporation currently holds a 10 percent share of the international passenger market. A record 3.88 million passengers passed through TIA last year.

“Now, with the addition of two A330 aircraft, we aim to increase the passenger market share to at least 25 percent,” said NAC Deputy Managing Director Ganesh Bahadur Chand.

According to him, the aircraft will be put into commercial service in 15-20 days after finishing the paperwork with the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal.

The plane, however, will not fly on new routes immediately; it will operate on the Doha, Dubai and Bangkok sectors for at least a month. The plane will fly to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and connect Japan and South Korea in the second phase, according to NAC.

On October 26, 2009, the NAC board decided to purchase two aircraft from Airbus-an A320-200 (narrow body) and an A330-200 (wide body) to expand its international fleet.

In December 2009, with controversy surrounding the purchase process, the then Public Accounts Committee (PAC) directed the government to cancel the deal while the Ministry of Finance directed the Tourism Ministry to scrap the purchase process on May 25, 2010.

NAC Managing Director Sugat Ratna Kansakar was also jailed for alleged irregularities.

The order eventually halted NAC’s expansion plan for three years. The deal was revived in June 2013, but the order was changed to two A320s. The two A320s were delivered in 2015.

The plan to equip NAC with wide body jets was revived by Kansakar after he was re-appointed the managing director of the corporation in May 2015.

The arrival of two wide body jets has been described as a ‘game-changing event’, allowing NAC to compete with other international players on long-haul routes in Europe, Japan and beyond.