By Xinhua,
Kathmandu : Nepal’s first aircraft built by its engineers Saturday successfully completed a test flight in the country’s western Pokhara city, a media report said.
According to eKantipur.com, Russian pilot Alexander Maximov led the test flight of the light aircraft built by the students of the Institute of Engineering in the Nepali capital.
The two-seater aircraft, costing about one million Nepali rupees (about $12,500), has a take-off weight of 400 kg. The aircraft flew for about a minute, covering a distance of about 1.5 km, it said.
The aircraft was built with an Austrian-made engine and locally available material, after nearly two years of research and documentation by eight students of the Fabrication Group of the institute, the report said.