On December 12, newlywed Sandhya Nepal took a night flight for the first time in her life, flying from Kathmandu to her new home in Biratnagar.
“We completed the marriage ceremony in the evening, and caught the 8pm service to travel to the groom’s home. It was my first experience of flying at night. We didn’t face delays and reached home without any hassles,” said Nepal, a civil engineer who lives in Kapan.
Nepal’s civil aviation body has decided to keep most airports in the Tarai plains open until midnight from Thursday, which means these domestic airports will now operate 18 hours a day.
“While the country's two international airports in Kathmandu and Bhairahawa will remain open 24/7 from May 16, at least seven airports in the southern Tarai will run 18 hours a day from Thursday,” said Pradeep Adhikari, director general of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal. “This will reduce cancellations and disperse traffic movement throughout 18 hours.”
Airports in Chandragadhi, Biratnagar, Janakpur, Simara, Bhairahawa, Nepalgunj and Dhangadhi will operate three shifts.
Seven of the nine airports in the country’s southern plains are now capable of handling night flights after being equipped with area navigation technology. In the past, lack of technology forced domestic airlines to call it a day after 5pm.
Keeping the airports open longer means more business for shops, restaurants, hotels, taxis and public vehicles which will boost the country’s economic output, travel traders and economists say.
The country goes to sleep by 7 while the capital city retires by 8, which effectively means no business during the night.
“This is a loss to the economy,” said Aryan Gupta, who owns Raj Kumar Pan Pasal, a small shop in Thapathali.
“The police used to come at nine and order us to close the shop. Why aren’t we allowed to open till midnight?” he said. “But after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted in early March, we have been allowed to stay open a bit longer. There are still some restrictions though.”
Nepali authorities for long have been averse to nighttime businesses, citing various reasons including security.
“It’s ridiculous that the state’s security mechanism orders shops to close as early as possible saying it cannot provide security to people operating businesses at night,” said Gupta.
Sujeev Shakya, chairman of Nepal Economic Forum, in his article in the Post in December says, “When you take a plane after sunset flying into different parts of Nepal, one can see villages, towns and cities glittering in the dark. This is a stark contrast to five-six years ago when Nepal reeled under up to 16 hours of power cuts daily.”
“Night flights are becoming popular, and it is nice to see a passenger from Bhadrapur transit in Kathmandu for a bit and then take off to Bhairahawa, something we could not have thought about a decade back,” he added.
Economists say Nepal has so far capitalised the day economy to some extent, but the nights remain totally untapped.
“Until 2017, when Nepal was reeling under 18 hours of power cuts, it was understandable that we had to close the shops. Now, the scenario is different,” said Gupta, the pan shop operator. “When investors demand security, the state should provide it and not make impositions like they used to before.”
Electricity supply has allowed towns and villages to stay open longer. There are more economic activities nowadays. Political unrest in the country adversely affected economic growth for decades, but lately there is some sort of stability. The armed outfits that posed security threats in the past too have joined peaceful politics.
According to the central bank, the growth rate for most of the past decade hovered around a mere 3-4 percent, peaking at 6 percent in 2007-08 after the Maoists and the government signed the comprehensive peace accord in 2006.
Then followed long hours of daily load-shedding when Nepalis were forced to live in darkness. Between 2007 and 2017, the country suffered a massive electricity shortage that caused up to 18 hours of daily power outages. The rolling blackouts had a disastrous effect on Nepal's economy.
The decade-long Maoist insurgency (1996-2006) that killed 17,000 people led to heightened security across the country. This was compounded by lack of jobs and political instability that made people leave en masse.
The daily power cuts lasted up to 18 hours as Nepal was able to meet only 80 percent of its electricity requirement from 2008 to 2016. A World Bank working paper estimated that this shortage of electricity supply or load-shedding reduced Nepal’s gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 6 percent during those years.
Residential load-shedding ended in early 2017, and there has been no industrial load-shedding since early 2018. However, the NEA has started reducing power supply to the industrial areas in the eastern region, since last month citing reduced supply from India.
The results reveal that power cuts caused a reduction of 6.4 percent of annual GDP, on average, during the 2008-16 period. This means if there had been no load-shedding, Nepal’s annual GDP would have been almost 7 percent higher, on average, as compared to what it was during the 2008-16 period, according to the World Bank.
The worst impact was observed in investments. Load-shedding caused a nearly 33 percent loss in investment demand. In other words, if there had been no load-shedding, the average annual investment would be more than 48 percent higher as compared to the level during 2008-15.
Due to the lower investment and production losses caused by load-shedding, the total industrial output decreased by almost 7 percent.
As production activities decrease, international trade would also decrease; due to the load-shedding, annual exports and imports were estimated to decrease by, on average, 2.8 percent and 5.4 percent respectively during the 2008-16 period.
“Our model estimates that Nepal has lost a total of $11 billion value of the GDP in nine years during the 2008-2016 period due to the electricity load-shedding. This amount is almost equal to Nepal’s GDP in 2008. If the annual GDP loss is expressed in 2016 prices using the corresponding GDP deflator values, the total GDP loss over the 2008-2016 period amounts to $14.5 billion,” the report said.
“Keeping airports open until midnight is a welcome step,” said Birendra Bahadur Basnet, managing director of Buddha Air, the country’s largest private airline. “We have been operating at night for the last few years, and the response from travellers has been good so far.”
Basnet says airlines can divert at least 30 percent of their day traffic to night slots and reduce congestion at airports.
“But there should be proper amenities like public transport, shops, restaurants and hotels to serve travellers when they land at the destination airport,” he said.
Until a decade ago, less than a million people used to fly on domestic services. The numbers have grown by leaps and bounds. In 2021, according to Tribhuvan International Airport statistics, Nepal’s domestic airports handled 3.54 million fliers, most of them Nepalis. This is the highest number of domestic air travellers recorded in the history of Nepali aviation.
"The numbers are increasing," said Adhikari, chief of the civil aviation regulator.
In Kathmandu, ride-hailing apps like Pathao, Tootle and others have become a boon for travellers in both daytime and nighttime.
“It’s time for the government to wake up,” said economist Bishwambher Pyakuryal. “The government needs to realise that the night market is also equally productive to the day’s economy if it is promoted and properly managed.”
The local economy benefits a great deal from a vibrant nightlife.
“It's a simple fact that when restaurants, bars, theatres and nightclubs are open 24/7, it will boost employment as they will require staff to work two to three shifts, and in the process, increase state revenue too,” said Pyakuryal.
The government has already decided to open tourist hotspots like Thamel, Jhamsikhel, Pokhara and other cities 24/7 to boost tourism.
Throughout its long history, nightlife has been central to Thamel’s identity. Security was beefed up during the second people’s movement in 2006. Logistically, until mid-2017, the country was facing acute power outages of up to 18 hours a day. All these events had a profound impact on nightlife tourism in Nepal.
Though no studies have been done on the economic impact of nightlife, tourism industry insiders say tourists spend double in the nighttime compared to daytime.
“The basic thing of the economy is to utilise time,” said Pyakuryal, “no matter whether it's in the day or in the night.”
