Royal Nepal Air: A ROYAL pain

makattack

Just wanted to revive this thread and see if RNAC has gotten better, so I know what to expect.

Unfortunately I saw this post only AFTER I booked my flight. I'll try to update when I get back.

Indizen

Thanks for the update. Do any of the private airlines fly into India?

adityabee

nope! as of today it's only Nepal Airlines (they dropped the Royal prefix) and the Indian Carriers (JetLite, Air India & Jet Airways). lastly, the Bhutanese national airline Druk Air also flies between Kathmandu and New Delhi.

Indizen

Which airlines fly to Varanasi, and / or Kolkata and Patna?
The cheapest fares to Kathmandu can be got from which Indian city?

adityabee

direct flights (all to Kathmandu):

from Kolkata: Air India IC 0747 <5000 Rs. one way

from Varanasi: Air India IC 0751 - 7200 Rs. one way

from Patna: (no direct services)

from New Delhi: Air India, Nepal Airlines, Druk Air, JetLite and Jet Airways.

the lowest price you can expect to pay is Rs. 9850 return on Nepal Airlines or JetLite from New Delhi (Rs. 5500 one way).

makattack

I've been doing some extensive searching for a trip from DEL-KTM in August, and the best deal I found right now (bought the ticket yesterday) is through cleartrip.com with Nepal Airlines for Rs 9734 (tax & fees included).

adityabee

it would be quite impossible for you to have gotten cheaper than that as the price now includes:

IGIA airport tax - 300 (unconfirmed)
IGIA UDF - 1300
TBIA - airport tax - 481
fuel surcharge
booking charges
actual published fare

all costs in Inr.

unfortunately cheap Kathmandu tickets are a thing of the past (Why doesn't Air India Express fly the sector?!!! their Chennai to Colombo flight is Rs. 2471!)

ribbony

We need to book flight DEL-KTM-DEL now that we have our long haul sectors ticketed. Looks like RNAC is still the cheapest by a long shot. But, their old web site does not work. Does anyone have a link to the RNAC site that works ?

makattack

I booked my ticket through Cleartrip.

By the way, I just returned from a trip to KTM through RNAC, and they did end up cancelling (they called it 'postponing') my return flight to the next day, and I didn't find out until the day before when my trekking agency made a call. They offered to put me up for the night in KTM (and pay for all food taken at the hotel), but were extremely reluctant to shift me to another airline (claimed there were no more available seats, which is doubtful).

So if you book, be sure to give yourself some buffer time if you need to make any flight/train connections. Good service, albeit not very reliable.

ribbony

"Postponing" would sure throw the logistics around.

We have committed to the del-ktm-del travels, befoe we could have got a flight into ktm from sydney but would still have to fly to delhi and the one way flights I found on the web were only a 1000IR less than return.

Thanks

PS: RNAC is no doubt keen to schedule as many flights as possible as it needs the $, however that tactic only works for so long without looking after the planes and passengers.

kshastry

RNAC is no longer "Royal". Maoists were more interested in removing stickers from the plane fuselage than care about the plight of tourists. Their maintenance and safety norms are a suspect. I would avoid flying RNAC as long as there are alternatives to KTM.

If you have time in hand, I would suggest overland route to KTM. Fly to an Indian airport nearer to the border and then drive into Nepal. I had done a trip from Bagdogra to KTM. It is a good introduction to Nepal.

See my trip report here.

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ribbony

Time is too short to start from the Eastern end of Nepal (we did that crossing on our last trip in 1996), this time we are focused on Pokhara as we have not trekked in the Annapurnas since the mid 1980's. I think that flying is a necessity as we are a couple of days short for what we need to do, and if we get bad weather on the trekking passes we will be struggling to complete our list of treks and make it back to Delhi on time.