Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation put one of its Boeing 757s at the disposal of King Gyanendra's recent 21-day tour but it looks like it will get paid only for 48 flying hours. Already on the verge of bankruptcy, the national flag carrier is sure to plunge deeper into crisis thanks to the state's abuse of authority. According to RNAC officials, the 757 was chartered at the rate of Rs 770,000 per hour. During the 21-day tour, the king used the plane to attend the SAARC summit in Dhaka and then the information summit in Tunisia.

He then travelled on to Burundi, South Africa, Tanzania and Egypt. The government is paying the airline only for the hours it was in the air, which totals Rs 37 million. If the plane had flown its scheduled flights during those weeks, RNAC would have earned more than Rs 93 million, according to a senior pilot. This doesn't even count the ground handling charges, landing and parking fees at various African airports and the airline's losses for rerouting and cancellation of booked passengers. So the king's visit cost the airline and ultimately the Nepali people, Rs 56 million. And that is only the airline's losses.