Even as Kathmandu airport is faced with a critical shortage of parking bays affecting flight schedules, Indian carriers have resumed normal service.
Some of these are operating additional flights across major Indian cities and Kathmandu, thereby helping the stranded people in Nepal, jolted by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake last Saturday that left 4,347 dead and 7,500 injured so far.
In a statement, Jet Airways said: "Due to relief efforts in Kathmandu, there is a critical shortage of parking bays and resources for scheduled flights arriving at Kathmandu airport."
The airline operated three flights to Kathmandu on Tuesday. Till May 2, it is also offering possibly the lowest fares for travel from Kathmandu to Mumbai and Delhi on all fresh bookings ex-Kathmandu.
"We will be operating three flights today (Tuesday) to Kathmandu to assist travel of our guests back to India. In the past three days, we have facilitated nearly 800 guests to fly out of Kathmandu," the company said in a statement earlier Tuesday.
As on April 27, the airline had brought back 500 Indians.
Jet Airways will also waive freight charges for shipping relief material on board its flights to Kathmandu.
Spicejet, which operated its first additional flight on the very night of the devastating earthquake to help rescue operations tweeted on Tuesday: "All flights out of KTM chockablock. Evacuating other nationalities too, 50 Spanish evacuees last night flown out".
It had also flown a 55-member German rescue team and five rescue dogs to Nepal on Tuesday morning.
"SpiceJet has operated a total of six Boeing flights in the last 48 hours from Kathmandu to Delhi, and in the process has evacuated almost over 1,100 people of various nationalities," the company said in a statement.
"Of the 1,100 people flown out of Nepal, 90 percent are Indians," an company official told IANS.
It has also adopted a first-come-first serve basis for the evacuation process.
"On the first day of relief operations, the airline also ran into the situation of a high number of last-minute cancellations and no-shows as passengers or their families had made multiple speculative bookings and then departed on the first flight available on any airline or air force aircraft.
"We have since put a process in place where we will accommodate stranded passengers on a first-come, first-serve basis in such situations even if they do not have a booking on the airline," it said.
Shortly after the quake, state-owned Air India said in a statement said it will carry relief material free of charge a on priority basis on its flights to Kathmandu, both from Delhi and Kolkata, besides operating two additional flights apart from its regular schedule.
It has resumed its daily scheduled operations from Delhi and alternate-day flights from Kolkata towards Nepal's capital.
Budget carrier Indigo operated an additional flight on Monday apart from its single return flight to Nepal.
Until Monday night, nearly 5,400 Indians were brought home from the Himalayan country.
-- Indo-Asian News Service
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