October 31: Last-minute cancellation of a Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) flight to New Delhi on Sunday afternoon left 2544 passengers stranded. Some of the passengers were sent to New Delhi through other airlines while the flag carrier of Nepal promised to send the remaining passengers to their destination on Monday.

Nepal Airlines and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, the regulatory body, have been blaming each other for the flight cancellation. CAAN has accused NAC of making attempts to fly the aircraft without any approval for the flight schedule. The airliner has defended the move saying that it has already presented the flight schedule to the CAAN and has been trying to get it approved.

CAAN has implemented the winter schedule effective from Sunday, October 30. As per this schedule, CAAN had asked airline companies to submit their flight schedules between October 30 to upcoming March. Accordingly, NAC submitted its flight schedule to CAAN, insists NAC Spokesperson Archana Khadka.

However, it has been learnt that CAAN delayed approval of the flight schedule with the intention of pressing the airline companies to conduct flights from Bhairahawa-based Gautam Buddha International Airport as well.

NAC was confident that CAAN would approve the flight schedule and didn’t issue any notice to the passengers. The state-owned airline company also issued boarding passes to the passengers who were ready to board the aircraft. However, CAAN cancelled the flight in the last minute saying that the flight schedule hasn’t been approved.

NAC said that it is ready to conduct flights from GBIA as per the wish of CAAN but said it would take at least two months for technical management to operate the flights from the new airport.

Taking this as a disobedience, CAAN had disapproved four flights of NAC to New Delhi. NAC has been conducting 14 flights a week to New Delhi, including two flights a day. However, NAC has been allowed to conduct only 10 flights a week to New Delhi this winter.

Tribhuvan International Airport’s Spokesperson Teknath Sitaula confirmed that 245 passengers of NAC were issued boarding passes but the flight was cancelled as the flight schedule was not approved by CAAN. Sitaula said that NAC should have informed the passengers about the flight schedule but did not do so. Instead, the airline company called the passengers to board the flight even though the schedule was not approved, said Sitaula.

NAC Spokesperson Khadka said that they tried to get the flight schedule approved until the last minute but failed to do so. She said that the tickets for the New Delhi flight was sold beforehand and therefore the airline company was confident that CAAN would approve the flight schedule.

“We haven’t left the passengers stranded. We will send them to their destination by any means,” said Khadka.