Immediately subsequent to the visit of the Chinese President, Himalaya Airlines (a Nepal-China joint venture) announces connecting two capital cities, Kathmandu and Beijing, from 27 October, 2019. According to the airline sources, the schedule flights on this route will begin with two frequency a week and will culminate into daily frequency soon. Operating the daily frequency may produce an arrival traffic of more than 40 thousand a year. Himalaya is also known to have been planning to operate regular flights to Changsa, Nanchang and Guiyang from November, 2019. China produced an outbound tourist traffic of about 150 million in 2018. Operating flights on multiple Chinese routes and in multiple frequencies is expected to result in a sharp increase in Chinese arrivals in the country in 2019.
The airline sources also said that the plan of importing a brand new Airbus 319 had experienced a stumbling block due to the new Foreign Investment and the Transfer of Technology Act, which treats an aircraft lease as a foreign direct investment and requires an FDI approval. Such an approval takes several months. Following that a regulatory banker approval is required for lease payments. This is unusual in the airline industry and lessors are unwilling to lease to the aircraft to Himalaya in such situations. The industry will bear a labor pain of securing a permit every time they have to lease in an aircraft.
