Turning an unfortunate incident into a new opportunity is really a rare feat and what if the resultant is creating huge reputation! Exciting, right?<\/p>\n
A similar strategy struck a Nepali pilot Captain Bed Prasad Upreti\u2019s mind, who moved on to create Nepal\u2019s first such aviation museum out of a plane that crash-landed at the country\u2019s only international airport two years back.<\/p>\n
Airbus 330, a Turkish Airlines plane that was carrying around 224 passengers, had skid off the runway and crash-landed at the Kathmandu Airport in March 2015.<\/p>\n
Luckily, the crash did not harm any of the passengers on-board. But, the airport had to remain shut for almost four days till the removal of the crash-landed plane.<\/p>\n
Eventually, the plane was parked aside at a corner of the airport where it remained exposed to open environment rusting for almost two years.<\/p>\n
Here is where Upreti\u2019s initiative to create the country\u2019s largest aviation museum began.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is unfortunate that the aircraft had an accident and was grounded, but I saw a perfect opportunity,\u201d says Upreti.<\/p>\n
Upreti\u2019s efforts to turn the crashed plane into an aviation museum began with bringing the crashed plane 63 meter from airport across the road to the museum lot.<\/p>\n
As a process, Upreti recalls a similar experience he had in transporting an abandoned Fokker 100, half the size of Airbus A330, 500 km to Dhangadi of Nepal\u2019s far west to set up a museum on a smaller scale than the present one.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransporting that plane across districts was much easier than relocating the Airbus meters away from the airport,\u201d adds Upreti.<\/p>\n
He has changed the interior of the plane by removing the entire seating set up and made it spacious.<\/p>\n
Upreti invested USD 600,000 and also acquired Rs 20 million aid in loan from the Everest Bank to build the museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs per the contract, if we are unable to run the aviation museum after 10 years from now, all the parts of this museum will be sold to junkyards. I hope that won\u2019t happen,\u201d says Bed.<\/p>\n