By Muna Chand
Kathmandu, April 4
Flights towards high hilly districts in Karnali Province have been disrupted for the past few days.
Tara Air, Summit Air, and Sita Air, which provided regular services to Humla, Mugu, Jumla, and Dolpa, have diverted their services to the eastern districts, causing inconveniences to the people of the remote districts in Karnali.
Although people of southern Humla have access to motor services for out-district travel, the people of Sarkegad, Kharpunath, Simkot, and northern Namkha rural municipality face more problems traveling outside the districts due to the cessation of flights.
Simkot, the district headquarters of Humla, is yet to be connected with the national road
network. According to Simikot Airport, it sees disruption of flights since Sunday and as a result, aspiring passengers have been left stranded at the airport.
Those awaiting their flight for Simkot at Nepalgunj and Surkhet complained that the flight
disruption had lengthened their stay and made the travel unnecessarily expensive.
Now, the services of private airlines companies have focused on tourist flights at Lukla,
Pokhara, and Jomsom. The people of Humla complained that they are not the priority of airline service providers during the tourist season. “They violate the rule for at least one flight for Humla this season.”
State-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) conducts only a limited number of flights for
Nepalgunj-Humla and the people accuse it of ‘influence of power’ in issuing air tickets. NAC
employees in Nepalgunj are accused of favoritism to their relatives in power in the distribution of air tickets.
