Emergency Flight Permits increased

The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal has extended its emergency flight permit issuance service to outside of just Kathmandu.

Until now, the airlines were required to contact the CAAN office at the Tribhuvan International Airport of Kathmandu for such a permit. However, from now onwards, they can apply for such permits at the CAAN offices based at airports in Lukla (Solukhumbu), Pokhara (Kaski), Nepalgunj (Banke), and Surkhet (Surkhet).

Although the government has recently suspended scheduled national and international flights owing to the Covid-19 crisis, emergency flights can operate during this period. In that case, the mentioned airports can issue permits, informed a source at the authority.

In particular, the authority has expects a lot of emergency flights from Lukla airport in the next few weeks as hundreds of mountaineers return from Everest.

Many of them could need rescue flights or just return flights to Kathmandu in a hurry.

We had earlier seen this release from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal;