A delegation consisting of technicians and bureaucrats left for China on Thursday to take a closer look at the aircraft being made for Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) following widespread criticism of the performance of the planes delivered earlier.

The team is led by Suresh Acharya, joint secretary of the Tourism Ministry, and includes two engineers and a pilot from NAC and a representative from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. They will spend a week at Xi’an Aircraft Industrial Corporation, the maker of the MA60 aircraft, and Harbin Aircraft Industry Group, the manufacturer of the Y12e.

Tourism Minister Aananda Pokharel said that the delegation had been mandated to make a physical inspection of the aircraft on the assembly line to help the government decide whether to go ahead with the purchase deal or not.

“As there has been a lot of criticism with regard to the aircraft’s performance, we want to be sure about the specifications relating to their capabilities,” said Pokharel.

The MA60 and Y12e aircraft currently in operation in Nepal are flying with a load restriction. The national flag carrier said that the planes could not carry a full load of passengers on Nepali routes, about which they had not been told in advance.

Although the Y12e aircraft is designed to fly over remote terrain, it has a regulatory limit, which means the manufacturer has not issued a certificate allowing it to fly to airstrips with a slope of more than 2 degrees.

Due to the regulatory limit, NAC has been operating the Chinese aircraft on only a few sectors like Janakpur, Bharatpur and Pokhara.

Joint Secretary Acharya said that the purpose of their visit was to make a physical inspection of the aircraft as directed by Tourism Minister Pokharel since the purchase deal had been delayed for a long time. “After the study is completed, we will compare our findings with the performance chart issued by the manufacturer.”

Currently, a NAC technical team is reviewing the performance chart of the Chinese-made aircraft and will submit a report to its board.

On November 29, 2012, NAC and China’s AVIC International Holdings, the aircraft supplier, had signed a commercial agreement for six aircraft. One 56-seater MA60 and one 17-seater Y12e arrived in Kathmandu on April 27 and November 3, 2014 respectively under this deal. These two aircraft were provided to Nepal as gifts.  

However, the delivery of the rest of the aircraft on order—three Y12e and an MA60—has been put off after NAC complained about their performance.

China has provided one MA60 and one Y12e worth Rs2.94 billion as gifts. The other aircraft are being bought with a soft loan of Rs3.72 billion provided by China’s EXIM Bank.

According to a high-level NAC official, the bank has made a 60 percent down payment to the aircraft manufacturer. “As the project is purely a government-to-government deal, the government

team will resolve the issue,” said the official.

“We cannot officially speak on the aircraft procurement process until the government team submits its report with valid reasons.”

NAC found the planes to be financially unviable due to their poor performance after test flying them on a number of routes, and wrote to the Tourism Ministry on January 26 telling it so.

NAC had also informed its line ministry that if the problems were not resolved, they would not want to procure the remaining aircraft. Since then, the planned procurement of the remaining aircraft has been kept on hold, and various committees have been formed to look into the matter.