Kathmandu, Sept. 16 -- A day after the government officially announced allowing domestic airlines to resume services from Thursday, private operators on Wednesday criticized the diktat, saying they cannot fly the planes half empty.

The operators have decided not to fly any scheduled passenger flights until the government rolls back its decision to allow them to fly only with half of the capacity.

"The decision to fly 50 percent empty in the name of preventing coronavirus transmission is not justifiable," said Birendra Bahadur Basnet, managing director of Buddha Air. "So we have decided not to fly planes."

The government had halted domestic flights from March 24 to contain the spread of the virus. All the domestic airlines planes have b...