Festival travelers stuck at Nepalgunj airport, no tickets available

People heading home to celebrate Dashain, Tihar and Chhath festivals have been stranded at the Nepalgunj airport in Banke district due to the shortage of air tickets. The stranded people have left various districts of the country for Karnali and Sudurpaschim Provinces to observe the festivals.

Dhananjaya Jethara, who was spotted in Nepalgunj, complained that he had been stranded for five days after he could not get an air ticket. According to him, he worked as a school teacher in Bhojpur district and headed to his home to celebrate Dashain, but he was forced to stay in a hotel paying a large sum of money for a ticket.

"Every morning I visited the ticket counter of the Nepal Airlines Corporation for air tickets, but returned empty handed," he said.

As travelling by land is considered 'unsafe', people from remote hilly districts often opt to travel by air. Passengers have been dealing with problems due to irregular flights. Without access to the road network, people of Dolpa and Humla, Jumla, Mugu and Bajura districts have been suffering due to the lack of air tickets, complained the passengers.

Sangita Bista of Kolti in Bajura district complained that she is worried about how to go home to celebrate Dashain due to the shortage of tickets.

She accused the NAC of distributing tickets to those with access to power, thus depriving general passengers of tickets. "There are 17 seats in one flight. Only seven seats are allocated for general people. The remaining tickets are distributed to those with access to power," she complained.

The problem has worsened due to the fact that the NAC flights are very few in number, and private airlines prioritise charter flights over regular flights, said Jethara. The pressure of passengers is high during Dashain, but the lack of enough flights has added problems, he said.

Private airlines do not operate regularly and only those who have access to the NAC have problems getting tickets, said Krishna Bahadur Singh of Humla district.

The NAC has added flights for Dashain to eight flights a week from three. The flights have been added due to the pressure of passengers, said Man Bahadur Chaudhary, station chief of the Nepalgunj regional office of the NAC. "Earlier, there were flights only three days a week. Now, the flights have been added for eight days and it has been made regular," he said.

Saying that efforts were underway to provide convenient services to the passengers, Chaudhary claimed that tickets were being distributed to the sick, children and elderly people on a priority basis. Increasing number of passengers was the cause of passengers not getting tickets, he said.