First Aviation Museum in Kathmandu. Image Source: The Kathmandu Post

First Aviation Museum in Kathmandu

The construction of the new aviation museum at Sinamangal, Kathmandu has been completed and is welcoming all the visitors.

After the huge success of the aircraft museum at Dhangadi, Bed Upreti Trust had announced in the month of March that they would give Kathmandu its first Aviation museum in Sinamangal by July this year. But, because of some reasons, the construction work took a little longer than expected. Nevertheless, the first aviation museum in Kathmandu is finally ready to attract people.

The museum has been built using a decommissioned Airbus A330 aircraft belonging to Turkish Airlines, which crash-landed at Tribhuvan International Airport in March 2015. The crash closed Nepal’s only international airport for four days.

The aircraft was kept in storage for more than a year at Sinamangal. It took Nepali and foreign technicians more than four months to cut the plane into smaller parts. According to a source, the parts were transported via trucks and cranes in the early morning. And it took another nine months to reassemble the plane.

The Bed Upreti Trust has already set up an aviation museum using an abandoned Fokker 100 in Dhangadi and was a huge attraction to people. The revenue from that museum goes towards assisting cancer patients. This aviation museum at Kathmandu is a sequel to the Dhangadi venture. The trust has partnered with Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) to set up the first aviation museum in Kathmandu. The museum was funded by the savings of Captain Bed Upreti along with an NPR. 27 million loan from Everest Bank. A total of NPR. 70 million has been invested in this project.

The first aviation museum in Kathmandu targets to educate and inspire young Nepalese to join the aviation sector. The museum also aims to provide information about the history of aviation, create awareness about the challenges and opportunities in the aviation sector. There will be more than 350 miniature models of aircrafts inside the museum, from the Wright Brother’s first aircrafts to fighter planes from World War I and II.

Students from Grade 9 to 12 can visit the museum for free, but only if they have a letter endorsing the visit from their respective schools. And all the other students with Identity Card will get a discount of 50 percent on tickets.

The general ticket price for Nepalese is NPR. 300, NPR. 600 for foreigners, and NPR. 150 for the handicapped.

The aviation museum will open from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. from October to February and from 9:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. from March to September.

The first Aviation museum in Kathmandu will surely be one of the most interesting places to visit for all the Nepalese and tourists in the valley. And another good thing is that we will also get to know more about the aviation sector.

 

Reference: The Kathmandu Post