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The Air Services Agreement between Nepal and India has been revised which will allow Nepal to fly to 10 more destinations in India, making the total destinations accessible to Nepalese flights to 21. The total numbers of seats in the flights have also been increased by five-fold from 6,000 to 30,000.
In addition to New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Bangalore and Varanasi earlier, flights to Goa, Amritsar, Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi are also available.
The new flights will fly to Bagdogra, Dehradun and Gorakhpur, which is the home to sizeable Nepali and Nepali-origin populations.
Indian flights now have 7 new destinations if Nepal - Pokhara, Lumbini, Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Janakpur, Dhangadhi and Bhairahawa.
Even the deal will be effective immediately, the Indian carriers will have to wait for a short while as the destinations in Nepal have to develop international airports. Nepal's sole international airport is in the capital city Kathmandu.
But the government has announced it would build an international airport in Lumbini and a regional one at Pokhara keeping in mind its plan to draw one million visitors in 2011.
The revised ASA was signed in New Delhi on Thursday after a two-day meeting which were held from Sep 8 to Sep 9. The Indian delegation was headed by aviation secretary M. Madhavan Nambiar whereas the Nepalese delegation was led by Nagendra Prasad Ghimire.
