Nepal's two new international airports are still waiting for international flights

On 23 September a flydubai Boeing 737 MAX 8 landed at Pokhara with 113 passengers and left for Dubai with 152. It was the first daily scheduled international service at an airport that opened on 1 January 2023. That it counted as news says much about the state of Nepal's two newest international gateways.

Pokhara: a loan without a market

Pokhara International Airport was built by China CAMC Engineering, a state-owned Chinese contractor, with $215.96m of Chinese financing. A quarter of the loan was interest-free from China's commerce ministry; the rest came from China's Export-Import Bank at 2% a year, with a seven-year grace period and 20 years to repay.

The idea was that Pokhara, the gateway to the Annapurna region, would draw tourists directly from abroad. For most of its life the airport has had a single international route, a weekly Himalaya Airlines flight to Lhasa, which was later halted for lack of demand. Republica reported in late 2024 that the airport's annual revenue of about Rs 350m barely exceeded its Rs 210m operating cost, leaving nothing to service the debt, and that the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal had struggled to make its instalments. Nepal has asked China to convert the loan into a grant. No conversion has been agreed.

The project's costs are also before the courts. Since December 2025 the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority has filed several corruption cases at the Special Court. The largest alleges Rs 8.36bn in losses from inflated construction costs and names 55 people and the contractor, Nepal News reported. Another, filed on 7 May 2026, alleges that Rs 3.62bn in taxes and duties were improperly waived for the contractor and names 13 people, including the former finance minister Gyanendra Bahadur Karki, The Himalayan Times reported. A parliamentary sub-committee had earlier reported irregularities in the project's cost and specifications. The contractor has disputed the parliamentary findings, and no one has been convicted.

Bhairahawa: built, then abandoned

Gautam Buddha International Airport, in Bhairahawa near Lumbini and the Indian border, opened on 16 May 2022 at a cost of about Rs 35bn (roughly $226m), with loans and grants from the Asian Development Bank and the OPEC Fund. It has a 3km runway and was designed for millions of passengers a year.

Between opening and May 2026 it handled 1,218 international aircraft movements and 69,316 international passengers. The busiest stretches came when Kathmandu's runway closed for maintenance and airlines were diverted. When Tribhuvan reopened, they left. The last scheduled international service, Thai AirAsia's twice-weekly flight to Bangkok, ended in March 2026. Shyam Kishor Shah, the airport's acting general manager, told Khabarhub that aircraft arrive but do not fill.

Local businesses, which have invested in hotels and transport around Bhairahawa, have pressed the new government to act. The airport waives landing, navigation and passenger service charges and offers ground-handling and fuel discounts. Airlines have still not come.

Why incentives are not enough

The Kathmandu Post argued in an editorial that the problem lies beyond the runway. Services that Nepali migrant workers depend on, including labour permits, medical checks and visa processing, remain concentrated in Kathmandu, so most outbound travellers fly from there anyway. Immigration, customs, quarantine and fuel supply at the regional airports must work as reliably as at Tribhuvan, and road links from neighbouring districts need improving.

Meanwhile, capital continues to flow to the old airport. Japan has just granted Rs 2.767bn to modernise Tribhuvan's air traffic control facilities. Pokhara's Dubai service is a start. Whether it lasts through the low season will show whether the government's promotion committee and fee waivers can create demand that geography and administration have so far denied.