KOHALPUR (Banke), Oct 20: People heading home to celebrate the Dashain, Tihar and Chhath festivals have been stranded at the Nepalgunj airport in Banke district due to the shortage of air tickets. The stranded people have left various districts of the country for Karnali and Sudurpaschim provinces to celebrate the festivals.
Dhananjaya Jethara, who was spotted in Nepalgunj, complained that he had been stranded for five days after he could not get an air ticket. According to him, he worked as a school teacher in Bhojpur district and was headed to his home to celebrate Dashain, but he was forced to stay in a hotel paying a large sum of money for want of a ticket.
"Every morning I visit the ticket counter of Nepal Airlines Corporation for air tickets, but return empty-handed," he said.
As traveling by land is considered unsafe, people from remote hill districts often opt to travel by air. Passengers have been dealing with this problem due to irregular flights. Without access to the road network, people of Dolpa and Humla, Jumla, Mugu and Bajura districts have been suffering due to the lack of air tickets, complained the passengers.
Sangita Bista of Kolti in Bajura district complained that she is worried about how to go home to celebrate Dashain due to the shortage of tickets.
She accused the NAC of distributing tickets to those with access to power, thus depriving general passengers of tickets. "There are 17 seats in one flight. Only seven seats are allocated for the general public. The remaining tickets are distributed to those with access to power," she complained.
The problem has worsened due to the fact that NAC flights are very few in number, and private airlines prioritize chartered flights over regular flights, said Jethara. The pressure of passengers is high during Dashain, but the lack of enough flights has created problems, he said.
Private airlines do not operate regularly and only those who have access to the NAC have got tickets, said Krishna Bahadur Singh of Humla district.
The NAC has increased flights for Dashain to eight flights a week from three. The flights have been added due to the pressure of passengers, said Man Bahadur Chaudhary, station chief of the Nepalgunj regional office of the NAC.
Saying that efforts were underway to provide convenient services to the passengers, Chaudhary claimed that tickets were being distributed to the sick, children and elderly people on a priority basis. A high number of passengers was the cause behind passengers not getting tickets, he said.