Flydubai's Inaugural Pokhara Service Gains Momentum as Seti River Flooding Raises Alerts
Pokhara's Gandaki region dominated Nepal aviation headlines as Flydubai's new daily service, the first scheduled international flights to Pokhara International Airport, built encouraging early ridership figures that energized local tourism entrepreneurs and hospitality businesses. Simultaneously, heavy monsoon rainfall swelled the Seti River to alarming levels, forming a lake at Ramghat in the heart of Pokhara, displacing riverside slum settlers, and cutting road access to the trekking hub of Ghandruk after the Modi River severed a critical route.
🏢 Flydubai's Pokhara Service Draws Strong Early Passenger Numbers
Flydubai's daily Dubai-to-Pokhara-to-Dubai flight, which launched regular scheduled service the previous Wednesday, reported encouraging ridership figures across its first days of operation. On Saturday, the aircraft landed at Pokhara International Airport at 6:05 PM carrying 156 passengers and departed for Dubai with 83 passengers from Pokhara. Earlier in the week, 122 passengers had arrived from Dubai on Thursday, while 143 traveled from Pokhara to Dubai on the same aircraft. The Friday flight was canceled due to bad weather. On the inaugural Wednesday service, 113 passengers arrived in Pokhara from Dubai, and 152 flew back on the return leg. Airport information officer Binod Singh Rawat confirmed the regular schedule calls for the aircraft to land at Pokhara each day at 6:15 PM and depart for Dubai at 7:15 PM. Flydubai is operating a Boeing 737 MAX 8 with a capacity of 165 passengers on the route. Pomanarayan Shrestha, former president of the Pokhara Tourism Council, described the early passenger signal as positive and encouraging, noting that bookings are strong and tour and travel entrepreneurs are happy. He added that hotels and restaurants in Pokhara have already introduced discount plans targeting passengers arriving on the new service, indicating that the tourism and hospitality sector is actively mobilizing to capitalize on the direct connectivity. [1]
🤝 Seti River Flooding Puts Pokhara Riverside Communities on Alert
Continuous rainfall caused the Seti River to rise sharply through the central stretch of Pokhara, forming a lake at the Ramghat area and threatening communities settled along both banks. The rising waters submerged slum settlements in Pokhara wards nine and eleven, along with the Ramghat and Shanti Ghat areas and the cremation grounds adjacent to a Buddhist monastery. Security personnel were mobilized to the affected riverside slum areas, with police maintaining continuous monitoring of the situation. Chitrangat Baral, Assistant Chief District Officer of Kaski, confirmed that officials of the District Security Committee, led by Chief District Officer Kuman Singh Gurung, conducted an on-site inspection of Ramghat. Baral noted that residents themselves indicated there was no immediate need to panic, but that authorities were maintaining a full state of alert and conducting precautionary risk assessments. He stated that as soon as the situation escalated to a danger threshold, settlements on both sides of the river would be evacuated to safe locations. Beyond Ramghat, continuous rainfall blocked multiple rural roads in Kaski district. In Syaulee Bazaar of Annapurna Rural Municipality ward eight, the Modi River cut away ten meters of the Newpul-Birethanti-Ghandruk road on Friday evening, effectively disconnecting the popular trekking destination of Ghandruk from Pokhara. Bharatman Gurung, spokesperson of the rural municipality, confirmed the road disruption. [2]
🤝 High Alert Declared as Seti River Forms Lake at Ramghat
News sources across Nepal reported on the high-alert status declared in Pokhara following the dramatic swelling of the Seti River, which produced lake-like conditions at Ramghat, a ghat area running through the city's central market district. The situation placed Pokhreli residents in a state of heightened anxiety because the Seti flows directly through densely populated urban areas, meaning that any rapid further rise in water levels poses an immediate and serious threat to habitation, commerce and infrastructure along its course. Authorities activated emergency protocols as the water level reached a point at which the normal river flow appeared to stall, pooling into the standing lake formation observed at Ramghat. The alert covered both residential communities and culturally significant locations along the riverbank, including ceremonial ghats used for religious observances and cremation rites. District administration and government officials were deployed to assess the extent of the inundation threat and to coordinate preparedness for precautionary relocations of at-risk residents. The Nepalnews.com report reflected widespread concern among residents and local leaders about the structural vulnerability of Pokhara's riverside settlements to monsoon-season flooding, a risk that repeats each rainy season as the city's urban growth continues to push communities into areas that have historically been susceptible to inundation when the Seti rises. [4]
🏢 Flydubai Marks Nepal Aviation Milestone with Direct UAE-Pokhara Link
Flydubai's launch of regular direct flights between the UAE and Pokhara marked a historic first for Nepal's aviation sector, establishing the first scheduled international airline service to Pokhara International Airport, a gateway to one of the world's premier trekking, adventure tourism and paragliding destinations. Rus Tourism News, covering the development as a major milestone for global travel, highlighted the launch as transformative for Pokhara's standing as an international tourism hub, framing the city as Nepal's tourism capital. The new route directly connects Pokhara to Dubai, one of the world's busiest aviation hubs, through which travelers from dozens of countries regularly transit, effectively opening the city to a far broader pool of international visitors than could previously access it by any direct air service. For the substantial Nepali diaspora living in the UAE and across the Gulf region, the service also creates a meaningful direct link to the Gandaki homeland, removing the need to connect through Kathmandu when traveling to western Nepal. By positioning Pokhara as the point of entry and departure, the route strengthens the case for Pokhara International Airport as a viable international hub in its own right, capable of drawing airlines and passengers without routing all Nepal traffic through the capital. The flydubai launch is widely seen as a pivotal moment in Pokhara's long journey toward realizing the international tourism potential the city has long been recognized for holding. [10]
Sources: [1] Ratopati · [2] Ratopati · [4] Nepalnews.com · [10] Rus Tourism News