Records of Pokhara Airport shows, airlines are operating only two flights a day to Jomsom - the district headquarters of Mustang. “Airlines last flew to Manang a fortnight ago,” said Pratap Babu Tiwari, chief of Pokhara Airport. [break]
As Manang and Mustang, which recently featured as one of the top 3 regions to travel in 2013 in renowned travel guide book Lonely Plant, are major tourist pulling destinations, airlines operate more than 18 flights a day on these routes during peaks seasons.
Tara Air operates daily scheduled flights to Jomsom from Pokhara, whereas Nepal Airlines operates flights twice a week (on Wednesdays and Thursdays) to Jomsom and Manang.
“Only Tara Air is operating now. Nepal Airlines has stopped its flights,” Tiwari told Republica.
Airlines officials attributed cut in flights to the lack of passengers on those routes. “We operated as much as 12 flights a day to Jomsom during peak season this year. Now the number of passengers has dropped so low that we are barely managing two flights a day,” said Ram Lamichhane, station manager of Tara Air, in Pokhara.
Mahesh Moktan, chief of Nepal Airlines in Pokhara, said the state-owned carrier has not operated flights to Jomsom and Manang over the past two weeks due to low traffic.
Airlines officials said well-off people of Mustang and Manang have already arrived in Pokhara to escape the winter, and only a few people are traveling to Mustang these days. They added that they did not expect the situation to turn better for the next few months as well.
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