The Director General of Civil Aviation has given its clearance to Jet Airways and Air Sahara to fly to Nepal and Bangladesh.

The two airlines are likely to begin their operations later this month after the DGCA approves their schedule for flight operations.

As the two airlines began their operations to Colombo, both private carriers had been eyeing to fly to Kathmandu and Dhaka after the Union Cabinet had given a blanket clearance for operations to SAARC countries.

The DGCA had cleared the proposal for Delhi-Kathmandu and Kolkata-Dhaka flights for the two air carriers and had asked them to file their schedule which would be cleared by the authority before the operations could begin.

Jet Airways officials said that the airline was ready to start daily flights to the Kathmandu later this month only after the DGCA approved its schedule.

The second phase would be to start operations in May from Kolkata to Dhaka, the officials said.

After initiating the response of its Chennai-Colombo flight, the Jet was also planning to start weekly flights to Colombo from Mumbai, Bangalore and Thiruvananthapuram.

Though the private airlines was not averse to flying to Maldives, the airline, however, would give it a serious thought only after ascertaining the traffic flow to the island.