The Air India flight that was denied landing at Kathmandu airport on Monday because of parking bay constraints could finally touch down at the Nepalese capital the day after but not before circling over the city for 50 minutes.

The flight took off from Calcutta at 1.50pm and landed at Tribhuvan International Airport at 3.40pm after hovering for 50 minutes, Air India officials said. The normal flying time from Calcutta to Kathmandu is about an hour.

Air India’s scheduled flight to Kathmandu on Tuesday had to hover over the airport, too, before landing. It had taken off at 1pm and landed at 2.45pm after being airborne over the Kathmandu airport for 45 minutes.

The airline operated an additional flight on Tuesday because Monday’s flight had to return to Calcutta with 68 passengers after hovering over Tribhuvan International Airport for more than half an hour.

The scheduled flight carried 78 passengers while the additional one had 110 passengers on board. Some of the stranded passengers had flown to Delhi and from there to Kathmandu.

An Air India spokesperson said Monday’s flight had to return because the Kathmandu airport authorities failed to confirm that a parking bay would be available.

Tribhuvan International Airport has 54 parking bays, of which only nine are reserved for the 40 international flights operating out of it.

Airport officials said the nine bays were often occupied, forcing international flights to hover, and in some cases to return to their base, like Air India’s Monday flight.

“We want to increase the number of parking bays but space is a constraint,” Birendra Prasad Shrestha, the general manager of the airport, said over the phone from Kathmandu.

The airport authorities said they have requested airlines, including Air India, to change flight schedules and make landings at night.

“We made the request because the traffic is less at night. But the airlines don’t agree to our proposal,” said an official at the airport.