Himalayan News Service

New Delhi, July 14:

Air Sahara will resume its daily flights to Kathmandu from September 1, exactly seven months

after the airlines shut operations to the Himalayan kingdom. “We should resume services to Kathmandu from September 1. It’s a sector that has a lot of demand and we’ve lost out on revenue after the critical situation in Nepal, but things on the flight services front should be normal soon,” Air Sahara president Ronojoy Dutta said. Air Sahara cancelled flights between Delhi and Kathmandu after February 1. On February 1, an Air Sahara morning flight had reached Kathmandu and hovered over Tribhuvan international airport before returning to Delhi. After February 1, other Indian airlines — Jet Airways and state-run Indian Airlines —

also cancelled services. India’s civil aviation minister Praful Patel had said that flights would

resume only when the Nepal government created a conducive situation. “We hope to resume services before September 1 as we’re losing revenue every day, but these things are not just in our hands. The feedback from our partners indicates that the passengers want this flight to be operational as soon as possible,” Dutta said. Dutta added that the airline was looking to launch operations on the Hong Kong and Bangkok routes, subject to a go-ahead from the government and availability of airport slots.