Kathmandu (TIP): Nepal Airlines Corporation, the Himalayan nation’s flag carrier, has urged the civil aviation authority to drop its unilateral decision to cut the number of flights on the lucrative Kathmandu-Delhi sector from 14 to 10 per week for not utilising the newly-opened Gautam Buddha International Airport.

In a statement on November 22, Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) said that its income has been sliced and it is having to bear the additional cost of rerouting passengers after the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) slashed the number of flights to Delhi from the Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), Nepal’s first international airport here. The authority reduced the number of flights to Delhi from TIA to 10 from 14 per week from October 30. The Gautam Buddha International Airport is 300 km west of Kathmandu, the country’s capital. The reduction of four flights per week during the peak season has caused a weekly loss of around Rs 90.5 million to the national flag carrier, The Himalayan Times newspaper reported, quoting an NAC official. “We’d been operating two Kathmandu-Delhi flights per day at near full occupancy, which was one of the major income sources for NAC,” the official said.(PTI)