Questions have been raised about use of agent in the flight by wide-body plane of the Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) to Brisbane, Australia chartered by the Australian Embassy in Nepal to rescue its stranded citizens.
While private airlines inside Nepal and other international airlines directly do ticketing in such chartered flights, the national flag carrier roped in an agent for ticketing when the embassy itself brought all the passengers.
"Other foreign airlines have also operated chartered flights to Nepal after the lockdown. They have been doing ticketing themselves," a representative of a private Nepali airlines told Setopati. "It is not that NAC cannot do that. It is very clear why that was not done."
Bon Travels was the agent for the chartered flight of NAC plane that took off for Brisbane with 257 passengers at 5:30 Wednesday evening.
The NAC signed an agreement with Bon at US$ 18,100 per hour for the chartered flight. NAC says the round trip will be 25 hours and minutes which means the total amount comes out to be US$ 457,025 (around Rs 54.843 million).
Bon will receive a cut of five percent (Rs 2.742 million) for ticketing from this. It will also get US$ 5 per passenger per segment in this chartered flight from Kathmandu to Kuala Lumpur and then to Brisbane. It will, in this way, get US$ 10 from each of the 257 passengers which comes out to around Rs 308,000 in total. The agent in this way directly earned over Rs 3 million from the chartered flight.
The agent also earns additional income as it has full authority in all the seats of the chartered flight. Bon earned around Rs 700,000 more from the chartered flight.
The Australian Embassy had directly written to the NAC for arrangement of the chartered flight to rescue Australian citizens stranded in Nepal. NAC could have done the ticketing itself but it brought in Bon as an agent which took at least Rs 3 million in commission despite having to do nothing to sell the tickets as the embassy had brought together all the passengers.
"A few NAC officials may have got some money from the agent but the compay suffered a big loss from this," an NAC source said.
NAC would not have to forsake even a penny if it had rejected an agent. It lost over Rs 3.70 million after accepting the agent.
"We have not done anything in this. The travel agent itself does not come with application seeking permission for chartered flights. The embassy, therefore, came with the application for permission. The embassy then sent an email to us stating that Bon is its official agency and asking us to sign agreement with Bon. We have signed the agreement with Bon on the basis of the letter," Acting General Manager of NAC Ganesh Bahadur Chand claimed.
Setopati has acquired a copy of the application the Australian Embassy sent to the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) for permission. The application mentions NAC as applicant and the embassy as the charter party. Bon is not mentioned in the application.
"That is a business letter. There is some secrecy. We can present it to the body we have to if necessary," Chand argued when asked if he can make the email the embassy sent asking the NAC to sign agreement with Bon public.
