February 21: Guna Airlines, one of the private companies which aims to become a major air service provider of Nepal by expanding its domestic flights by the year 2024, has been banned from services within 17 months of resuming its operations.
The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has banned the company from conducting flights because of the financial crisis faced by the company due to which it has not even paid salaries to its employees.
CAAN, the aviation governing body of Nepal, argued that the company’s failure to pay salary to its staff will increase the risk of flight safety. The authority sent a letter to the company on Monday directing Guna Airlines to ground all of its aircraft. However, the company had already stopped its services five days ago.
Jagannath Niraula, spokesperson of the authority, said that the planes were grounded considering the seriousness of flight safety after it was found that the pilots and crew members were not paid. "Correspondence has been sent for grounding the aircraft on Monday," Niraula told New Business Age.
Guna Airlines has said that the company is preparing to fly from next week. Prajwal Thapa, the spokesperson of the company, said that two Beechcraft will fly again from next Monday.
However, CAAN Spokesperson Niraula said that the authority can give permission to fly again only after evaluation after the company writes to the authority for lifting the ban.
Thapa said that due to financial problems, there was some delay in giving salaries to the employees and added, "There is no problem now. We are also selling aircraft. After the maintenance, we will start regular flights with two Beechcrafts soon.”
Thapa said that although the authority has written letter to the company directing them to ground the aircraft, the jet stream aircraft has not operated any flight since five days.
"We are preparing to resume flights from next Monday after assuring CAAN that we have resolved the financial issues," said Thapa. The company has seven aircraft namely Jet Stream and Beechcraft.
According to Thapa, the aircraft will be flown after the Beechcraft is repaired. The company has said that it will sell five jet streams. Thapa said that representatives from a foreign company has come to Nepal to purchase those aircraft.
Spokesperson Thapa also said that the company is planning to bring bigger aircraft after some time and continue the service.
The financial problems of the private sector airline company Guna Airlines are not new. Even in 2013, the company halted its flight services due to financial problems. The company, which was established in 2009, was closed for some years and started flying again from September 2021.
In 2013, another private company Simrik Airlines had purchased the aircraft of Guna Airlines. After that, the 'Guna' brand was no longer in existence until the owners invested more than Rs 1 billion to revive the brand..
Guna Airlines is a company under Guna Group headed by businessman Rajendra Shakya.
The company, which started flying from two destinations namely Kathmandu-Bharatpur and Kathmandu-Pokhara, has been flying to additional destinations- Biratnagar, Janakpur, Bhairahawa, Nepalganj, Surkhet, Tumlingtar and Simra after resuming its services.
