Govt. mulls to create aviation hubs to ease flights to hills

Kathmandu, Mar. 29: The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation (MoCTCA) is mulling developing a regional aviation hub to facilitate swift and reliable flight services to the hills and mountains across the country. 

Minister for Tourism Rabindra Adhikari indicated towards developing one airport in each of the provinces, except in Province 2, for this purpose. 

“There is a plan to operate flights with large aircraft from the capital city to the regional hubs and link the airports in the hills and mountains with those hubs,” he said while talking with journalists at his office in Singha Durbar on Thursday. 

In the past, flights to the hill areas were operated from the airports in the plains, such as Nepalgunj to Jumla, and Buddha Air recently started flight service on the Pokhara-Bharatpur and Pokhara-Nepalgunj routes while some mountain flights are operated from Pokhara. 

If the plan is implemented, it would lessen the burden on Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA), the only international airport of the country. 

The country urgently needs to ease the air traffic at the TIA as a large number of domestic and international aircraft have to be held in the sky while landing. 

Though the ministry is planning to expand the taxiway at the TIA, the expansion of the runway is no more possible. 

The plan to develop a second international airport (SIA) at Nijgadh of Bara district is still in a limbo as the government has not been able to spend the budget for the last couple of years, clearing a large number in the forest area and resettling about 1,400 families is still to be executed.  

Adhikari said that the government was reviewing alternative models of project development for the SIA. 

However, regional international airports at Bhairahawa and Pokhara are under construction.

“Currently, we can expand the taxiway and install modern air safety equipment at the TIA. In addition to that, it needs massive managerial reforms,” said the minister.

 He said that the national flag carrier, Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC), immediately needed new aircraft and capacity enhancement. 

According to him, investment made on the aircraft is investment on tourism as it directly supports the movement of tourists. 

The Tourism Ministry is also planning to produce tourism promotion materials, including websites and other literature in Chinese and Hindi languages, in addition to the current Nepali and English, with an aim to attract more tourists from the immediate neighbours. 

Talking about the casinos that were evading their tax liability, he said that the government would show no leniency to such companies and would raise taxes from them at the earliest. 

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 30 Mar. 2018.