Kathmandu, For the first time, regular commercial flights will be held at Pokhara International Airport. Himalaya Airlines has requested permission from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAN) to fly to Pokhara. Gyanendra Bhul, information officer of CAN, informed that Himalaya Airlines has requested permission to fly Pokhara-Lhasa 2 days a week. Himalaya Airlines has requested permission from us for regular commercial flights from Pokhara. ‘Himalaya Airlines has sought permission from us for regular commercial flights from Pokhara. We have already initiated the necessary process to grant permission,’ Bhul said.
Himalaya has submitted a plan to operate two weekly commercial flights from Falgun 17 to Chaitra 16. The airline has proposed to operate Kathmandu-Lhasa-Pokhara flights on Mondays and Pokhara-Lhasa-Kathmandu flights on Tuesdays. Himalaya Airlines has been operating two weekly flights from Kathmandu to Lhasa from Kathmandu. While Kathmandu-Lhasa air distance is 1.5 hours, Pokhara-Lhasa flight will be 1.5 hours.
Himalaya Airlines currently operates three Airbus 320-214s and one Airbus 319-115 to Beijing, Chongqing, Kuala Lumpur, Doha, Dammam, Dubai, Riyadh, Dhaka and Kuwait. An airline employee said that they have made preparations to fly to Pokhara after seeing the possibility of bringing tourists from Lhasa. “In the first phase, we have made a one-month plan. Apart from the correspondence in the can for the flight, we have made all other preparations,” the airline employee said. The company has made preparations to fly to Pokhara using Airbus-319-115s. This aircraft can accommodate 144 passengers at a time. The company is ready to set the initial fare for Pokhara-Lhasa at 250 US dollars, ie 34 thousand 300 rupees. After Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli visited China in the third week of November, Himalaya Airlines agreed to fly to Pokhara. Oli flew to China on November 17 and returned on the same company’s plane on November 20. Although the government approved a procedure on July 12 to provide various discounts to airlines operating international flights to Pokhara, no company has operated regular commercial flights to Pokhara yet. This airport was built two years ago with Chinese loan assistance. The airline is a joint investment of China’s Tibet Civil Aviation Development and Investment Company and Nepal’s Yeti World Investment. But NAC has not yet announced international flights to Pokhara