Pokhara Just Got Its First Real International Flight, Three Years After the Airport Opened
flydubai starts daily Dubai–Pokhara flights on 23 September 2026, the first scheduled international airline to serve Nepal's trekking capital since its $216 million airport opened in 2023.
At a glance
- Published
- TopicFlights & Access
- Verified againstflydubai official announcement
- Treks coveredKathmandu & Pokhara Tour — 5 Days, Mardi Himal Trek — 4 Days, Short Annapurna Base Camp Trek — 4 Days
Pokhara International Airport opened in January 2023 to a Chinese government delegation, a runway built for wide-bodied jets, and a promise that Nepal's second city would finally have its own gateway to the world. For most of the three years since, that gateway has sat mostly unused by scheduled international traffic. That changes on 23 September 2026, when flydubai begins daily direct flights from Dubai — the first scheduled international airline ever to fly the route.
Key facts
- flydubai launches daily Dubai–Pokhara service on 23 September 2026
- It is the first scheduled international carrier to serve Pokhara since the airport opened in January 2023
- The route is flown on a Boeing 737, roughly a 5-hour flight each way
- Economy fares start from AED 1,900 (about NPR 91,000) one-way
The airport's backstory is why this matters. It was built with a $215.96 million loan from China's Exim Bank under the Belt and Road Initiative, and for years it struggled to attract the international carriers it was designed for — a single chartered flight from China in 2023 and a weekly Lhasa service were about the extent of it, while a corruption case over the project's construction was filed in Nepal as recently as December 2025. A runway rated for jets from the Gulf and Europe was, in practice, mostly handling domestic hops from Kathmandu.
| Flight | Route | Departs | Arrives |
|---|---|---|---|
| FZ1165 | Dubai → Pokhara | 12:00 | 18:15 |
| FZ1166 | Pokhara → Dubai | 19:15 | 22:00 |
flydubai's own announcement frames the route as filling a gap Kathmandu can't: the airline says the service is expected to give international travellers direct access to western Nepal's trekking and eco-tourism economy without routing everyone through the capital first. Group CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith called it part of the airline's commitment to supporting trade and tourism flows between the UAE and Nepal, and commercial leader Sudhir Sreedharan pointed to strong existing demand from the UAE and flydubai's wider network — a network that includes onward connections across the Gulf, East Africa and parts of Europe and Central Asia, all now one stop from Pokhara instead of two.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
If you're flying in from the Gulf, East Africa, or anywhere on flydubai's network, you can now land directly in Pokhara and start trekking the next morning — no Kathmandu transfer, no domestic flight dependent on mountain weather. That's a real change for anyone booking a short Mardi Himal trek, a short Annapurna Base Camp trek from Pokhara, or simply a Kathmandu–Pokhara tour with paragliding and lake-time built in. Kathmandu still handles the bulk of Nepal's international arrivals and remains the only gateway for Everest-region trekking, but Pokhara no longer needs Kathmandu as a middleman to reach the rest of the world.
Sources: flydubai official announcement (news.flydubai.com); AeroRoutes flight-schedule reporting; Kathmandu Post and AidData reporting on Pokhara International Airport's financing and history.
Cover photo: Prince Nature via Pexels (Pexels License).
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