Himalaya Airlines refuted the media charges that the airlines charged excessive fair for Indian travelers visiting traveled to Saudi Arabia from its flights. According to a press release issued by the airlines, it says that the airline's fare was as per the international airfare.

“As per the decision made by Government of Nepal to allow Himalaya Airlines to conduct 3 charter flights, the airline had allowed the sale of air tickets on Global Distribution System (GDS) so that any IATA travel agencies shall be eligible to sell the tickets,” reads the press release,

On special request from the Embassy of India in Kathmandu, the Government of Nepal had approved to operate 7 charter flights by Nepal Airlines and 3 flights by Himalaya Airlines from Kathmandu to Saudi Arabia to ferry the stranded Indian nationals in Kathmandu.

In relation to this, some online news portals provided fictitious and misleading information on their news sites accusing travel agencies of taking unnecessarily high fares to the Indian citizens. The article also marked Ministry of Culture Tourism and Civil Aviation, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal and Himalaya Airlines, for which, Himalaya Airlines shows its great concern.

As per the decision made by the Government of Nepal to allow Himalaya Airlines to conduct 3 charter flights, the airline had allowed the sale of air tickets on the Global Distribution System (GDS) so that any IATA travel agencies shall be eligible to sell the tickets.

This provided an opportunity to passengers for wider access to ticketing, a competitive market among the agencies, and flexibility for issuing tickets from their convenient travel agent.

The airlines deemed this process important for the current pandemic situation to minimize the spread of the Covid-19 virus which could be arising from over-crowded sales counters.

The airlines would like to inform that all the ticket fares for the charter flights were released on the GDS which was equally accessible by all the IATA registered travel agencies worldwide, which is completely transparent with high level of service quality and provides competitive price to passengers.

The charter flights carry passenger-only one-way from Kathmandu to Saudi Arabia and return empty aircraft from the destination. Therefore, it is not unusual for the ticket fares to be proportionately higher.

The airline believes that the travel agencies would not charge exorbitant fares to passengers deliberately. But in any case, if any travel agency is found charging outrageous prices to passengers and if the airline receives evidence of such exorbitant charges, Himalaya Airlines shall proceed through the concerned authorities to take strict action against such misconduct.

Also, the airlines would like to draw the attention of such media agencies who are disseminating and publishing baseless news and information to the public before taking accurate and fact-based information from the concerned stakeholders. The airlines would like to request the general public to be more vigilant in accessing information from untrustworthy sources and also request the media to be more proactive in sourcing information considering the present and future development of the information industry, which in turn will be beneficial for the public, whole travel and IT industry and the Government.