Air service to Humla has resumed after a week. Because it is not linked with the national road network, the suspension of flights around seven days ago, caused by bad weather and a lack of aircrafts at Nepalgunj Airport, had severed the district’s connection to the rest of country. But that connection has been restored on Tuesday by Summit Air conducting its first flight to Simkot Airport since October 4.
Manoj Dongol, acting chief of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal’s (CAAN) Simkot office, said that Tara Air and Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) were also scheduled to land at Simkot but they had to cancel their flights due to bad weather. The weather also forced Summit to delay its flight by a few hours in the morning, Dongol said.
In addition to Humla, planes flew from Nepalgunj to airports in Jumla, Mugu, Dolpa and Bajura on Tuesday. According to the Civil Aviation Authority, Tara and NAC had one flight each to Mugu and Dolpa respectively and Summit and Tara had one flight each to Jumla and Bajura. As informed by CAAN, these are the first flights to have departed for the districts since the end of Dashain.
However, the same cannot be said about Rukum (West) and its Chaurjahari Airport.
The airport, which has been closed for the past eight years, was expected to come into operation this Dashain. The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation had assured the locals that it would be opened for this year’s festivals. However, they turned out to be empty promises and the airport is still closed.
Chaurjahari Airport was constructed in 1971 to serve the people of Rukum, Salyan and Jajarkot. However, it had to close in 2014 for maintenance. Since then, hardly any planes have landed here and there are no personnel to man the air traffic control tower and the security posts as well.
Source : TRN,
