Kathmandu, March 25

AirAsia, a Malaysian budget airline company, has asked Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) to waive their dues related to late fees. The company has already suspended its flights to Nepal since October 13, 2018 with around Rs 350 million pending dues to be paid to TIA.

Since then it has always been dragged into controversies related with its pending dues. According to TIA, the airline company is still to pay around Rs 194 million dues of which around Rs 130 million is related to late fees.

“One month back, the company had written a letter to TIA seeking a waiver of at least its late fees, however we refused to do so,” said Shashi Lal Pradhan, deputy manager of the Civil Aviation Office at TIA. After TIA refused its request to waive the late fees AirAsia had again sent a letter through the Embassy of Malaysia in Nepal.

“As we refused to waive their late fees they are now trying to approach the Nepal government via the Malaysian Embassy,” Pradhan said, adding, “If the government addresses the embassy’s request and directs us to waive their fees then we will have to waive it.”

Among the total pending dues of AirAsia the highest amount is their late fees and that is why TIA is refusing to waive it, Pradhan added. He further said that TIA does not have any intention of waiving the late fees but if the government gives a direction to that effect then they will have to do it.

Prior to this, AirAsia had paid a total of Rs 10 million of pending dues to TIA in mid-January. AirAsia had been conducting four flights a week to Kathmandu for six years with its Airbus A330 aircraft with capacity of 274 seats. However, it suspended all its flights due to a fall in passenger flow.

Besides AirAsia, TIA still has to recover around Rs 210 million from Himalaya Airlines, Rs 30 million from Saurya Airlines, Rs 9.6 million from Simrik Air and around Rs 48.4 million dues have to be recovered from airline companies that are currently out of service.