Increasing air traffic and adverse weather conditions disrupting flight operations around the country
April 16, 2017
Nowadays, the airspace of Kathmandu valley is encountering huge air traffic problem. The passengers are facing delays in their flights not only due to hefty air traffic but also the adverse weather conditions these days.
The scheduled flights are unable to happen due to bad weather around Kathmandu valley resulted by the uncontrolled pollution. Mostly, VFR (Visual Flight Rules) flights are being interrupted by the unfavorable weather conditions.
Increasing air traffic and bad weather conditions are jointly affecting the flight operations. This problem in Kathmandu has been affecting flight operations of other domestic airports around the country namely Pokhara, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj and Bhairahawa.
Passengers have been frustrated with the delay in flights as they have to wait longer in the airport. Past three days, Biratnagar Airport has been holding lengthy queue of passengers waiting their flights. Moreover, the foreign tourists are highly affected due to the fact that they are unable to catch their schedule flights to their homeland.
Lukla Airport, one of the extreme airports in the world, is receiving more than 30 flights a day from different domestic airlines due to the increasing number of tourists and mountain climbers. The airport is encountering huge difficulty in managing the air traffic.
Most of the airport managers around the country are urging the air traffic problem to be solved by the Kathmandu center. They are facing huge difficulty in handling the haphazard and complex air traffic. So, the respective authorities from Kathmandu Airport are urgently required to act accordingly to manage the air traffic.
According to the TIA spokesperson Prem Nath Thakur, the increasing number of tourists is the main reason behind the rocketing air traffic. Besides this, the bad weather has also highly contributed to the delay in flight operation.
Thakur said that the international flights are being operated smoothly but the problem has been rising from domestic flights so, the airport management committee will conduct a meeting with domestic airlines about the persisting air traffic issue soon. He also added that they have requested airlines to schedule night flights to those airports with night flight operation facility.
