Nepal shut down its only international airport in Kathmandu to big jets after its runway sustained damage from the influx of flights delivering aid.
The main runway was temporarily closed to big planes because of damage. Despite the setback, the UN coordinator for Nepal, Jamie McGoldrick, said the bottlenecks in aid delivery were slowly disappearing.
“I think the problem is there, but it’s actually diminishing,” he said, adding the Nepalese government eased customs and other bureaucratic hurdles on humanitarian aid following complaints from the UN.
“The government has taken note of some of the concerns that we’ve expressed to them and they’ve addressed those both at customs and the actual handling,” he said.
Birendra Shrestha, the manager of Tribhuwan International Airport, located on the outskirts of Kathmandu, said bigger planes were banned because the runway was deteriorating. The runway was built to handle only medium-size jetliners and not the large military and cargo planes that have been flying to the airport since the magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck, he said.
Medium and small-size jets will still be allowed to land, officials said.
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