Nepal seeks resumption of IA’s Kathmandu flight

Describing the hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu in December last as an “unpleasant incident”, he said it was the first such incident in the 50 years aviation history of Nepal.

“The security system at Kathmandu airport is of international standard as laid down by ICAO and all other carriers are also operating from there,” he said and asked whether any airline could stop its flights because of one hijack incident.

“There should be no apprehension that Nepal is taking security for granted,” Thapa said adding that passengers going through the Kathmandu airport now were “talking about hassles because of tight security measures”.

Indian government had stopped operating air service to Kathmandu soon after the hijacking on December 25 last year.

Stating that Kathmandu and New Delhi had always shared extremely cordial ties since times immemorial and Indians comprised almost 32 per cent of the total tourist arrivals to Nepal, Thapa said the decline in the number of visitors to Nepal recently was only due to Indian Airlines pulling out its flights from Nepal.

He said IA was not the only international airline operating from Nepal which had as many as 13 foreign airlines flying. These airlines were very much satisfied with the security system at the Kathmandu airport and had “never made any complaints whatsoever”.

Stating that the Indian media wrongly projected the episode in a bid to “sensationalise” it, Thapa said that the episode was over now and hoped that the media would offer full cooperation in boosting tourism which would benefit both countries.

He said that IA should resume its flights to Kathmandu as soon as possible as both India and Nepal were in loss as far as tourism and business were concerned.

Tek Bahadur Dangi, director of Nepal Tourism Board said that no other airline had even thought of pulling of Nepal following the hijacking.