International flights have commenced from the Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA).
A plane of Jazeera Airlines landed at the airport for the first time at 7 am yesterday. The narrow-body aircraft carrying 178 passengers arrived here from Kuwait as a maiden international flight to the GBIA, coinciding with the 2566th Buddha Jayanti.
The airplane was welcomed with the spraying of water jets after it landed at the airport. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has inaugurated the Gautam Buddha International Airport. The Jazeera Airlines plane will take off for Kuwait at 2.30 am tomorrow, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) said.
Sanjaya Bajimaya, Chief of the Tourism Department, Siddharthanagar Chamber of Commerce, said that process has been moved ahead to operate regular flights by Jazeera Airlines three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday).
He said his travel has already made bookings for 30 passengers departing from Bhairahawa. Domestic flights are operated daily from the old airport at Bhairahawa.
Twenty-four planes operate flights on a daily basis here. The flights in the international sector have been arranged for the nighttime to reduce the air traffic at the airport during the day owing to a single runway, GBIA general manager Govinda Dahal said.
