SriLankan Airlines will be operating flights to Nepal’s capital Kathmandu starting Tuesday, connecting the island nation to the Himalayan nation.

“We have approved the Sri Lankan Airlines flights effective from August 31," said Raj Kumar Chhetri, spokesperson for the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. “It will begin from Tuesday.”

The carrier will operate two weekly flights on Tuesdays and Saturdays using 158-seater Airbus A320 aircraft. The flight will arrive at the Tribhuvan International Airport at 9:40 am and depart to Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo at 10:40 am.

According to Nepal’s civil aviation regulator, passengers need to furnish evidence of hotel booking for 7 days quarantine before boarding the flight to Nepal. The travellers will require a negative PCR test report for Covid-19. The test should be conducted 72 hours prior to arrival.

The starting fare, as per the filing by the airline, begins from $599 one-way.

According to travel agencies in Kathmandu, Nepalis travelling to Saudi Arabia and other labour destinations of the Middle East have mostly booked the flights due to relatively low airfare compared to other airlines.

“We have targeted to promote Buddhist pilgrimage between the two countries once the Covid-19 situation becomes normal,” said Deepak Mainali, manager of Zenith Travels, the general sales agent of the airline in Kathmandu.

According to him, airfare to Australia and Japan will also be relatively cheaper as the airline expects transit passengers as well.

As per the travel protocol of Sri Lanka, fully vaccinated travellers are not required to stay in quarantine. They are required to stay at a certified safe and secure hotel until the on-arrival PCR test is performed [for 24-48 hours]. Once they test negative, vaccinated travellers can leave the bio-bubble.

The respective safe and secure hotel doctor will issue a “discharge document” upon verifying the status of vaccination and PCR test results.

Unvaccinated travellers should stay at a certified safe and secure hotel for the first 15 days of the visit and undergo an on-arrival PCR test. Travellers will undergo the second PCR test after 14 days and can leave the bio-bubble after getting a negative test result.

Direct air links between Kathmandu and Colombo had resumed in October 2016. Himalaya Airlines had been allowed to connect Colombo since the 1980s. However, the flight was suspended within less than a year due to low passenger volume.

National flag carrier Nepal Airlines, in its previous avatar as Royal Nepal Airlines, used to operate direct flights to Colombo during the 1980s. But the carrier suspended operations following an armed movement by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in Sri Lanka.

Nepal and Sri Lanka had been discussing flight connectivity since the end of the LTTE armed movement in Sri Lanka in May 2009. The two countries signed an Air Service Agreement in the same year.

Plans to establish direct flights on the Kathmandu-Colombo route were revived during the 18th Saarc Summit held in Kathmandu in November 2014.

Subsequently, the Sri Lankan government officially applied for authorisation to conduct daily flights between the two countries with Colombo-based carrier Mihin Lanka planning to start services. In March 2015, the Tourism Ministry had issued an operating authorisation to the carrier. But the proposed services did not happen.

According to Tourism Ministry statistics, in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic, Nepal received 1.2 million international tourists. Out of them, visitors from Sri Lanka were 55,869, a sharp decline from 69,640 in 2018.

The government statistics show that 97.5 percent of the Sri Lankan visitors entered Nepal overland from Bhairahawa to visit Buddhist sites in nearby Lumbini.