Departure
91%
vs 95% ▼ 5
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Tenzing-Hillary Airport, more widely known as Lukla Airport, sits at 9,334 feet in the town of Lukla in Nepal's Province 1, serving as the principal air gateway to the Everest region. Its single short runway, carved into a steep mountainside with high terrain at one end and a sharp drop into the valley at the other, has made it one of the most talked-about and demanding fields for any pilot to fly into. For the simulator pilot it offers a genuine short-field, high-altitude mountain-flying challenge with no margin for error.
Lukla Airport, officially Tenzing-Hillary Airport, is a small domestic altiport in the town of Lukla, Khumbu Pasanglhamu, Solukhumbu District, Koshi Province, Nepal. It is owned by the Government of Nepal and operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal, and it functions as the main air link for trekkers, mountaineers and cargo bound for the Everest Base Camp region, since no road reaches this part of the country. Its combination of a very short sloping runway, high elevation, mountain terrain and unpredictable weather makes it one of the most demanding fields a pilot can fly into, and it has long been described as among the most dangerous airports in the world.
The airport lies in mountainous terrain in the Solukhumbu District of Koshi (Province 1), Nepal, roughly 138 kilometres by air from Kathmandu, with flight times typically around 30 to 40 minutes. It is surrounded by high Himalayan terrain, with steep ground immediately beyond the northern end of the runway and a steeply angled drop into the valley below at the southern end. There is no road access to Lukla or the surrounding villages, so the airfield is the primary point of entry for the region.
Lukla has a single physical runway, 06/24, oriented roughly northeast-southwest, with a hard surface and runway lighting. The 24 threshold is listed at 1,783 feet and the 06 threshold at 1,776 feet. The runway carries a pronounced gradient, sloping upward towards the northern (24) end, and arriving and departing aircraft use it in one direction only: landing is made on runway 06 and takeoff on runway 24. There is no ILS or other instrument approach available.
Approach traffic is worked on 122.3 MHz and tower operations on 122.5 MHz. There is no published instrument approach, and all arrivals and departures are conducted visually.
Given the terrain, there is effectively no possibility of a go-around once committed to a short final approach, and published procedures reflect this: there are no go-around procedures at Lukla. Only pilots who have completed at least 100 short-takeoff-and-landing missions, have more than one year of STOL experience in Nepal, and have flown ten sectors into Lukla with a certified instructor pilot are permitted to land there, reflecting the demanding nature of the approach and departure. Flights are scheduled for the early morning wherever possible, since wind typically backs from northeast in the early hours to a southwesterly flow by mid to late morning, at which point crosswind or tailwind conditions frequently force closure of the airfield. Loss of visual conditions results in immediate closure, since all operations are conducted under visual flight rules with no instrument approach available. There is no lighting system suitable for night operations, so flying is confined to daylight hours, broadly between sunrise and mid-afternoon when conditions allow.
The airfield is a prominent visual feature in the town of Lukla itself, set into a steep mountainside with high ground rising immediately beyond the northern threshold and the valley falling away sharply beyond the southern end. Pilots inbound from Kathmandu or Ramechhap follow the terrain visually along the approach valley, using the surrounding high peaks and the town itself as the principal references for locating and joining for the single-direction approach.
Lukla Airport was built in 1964 under the supervision of Sir Edmund Hillary, who had originally hoped to site it on flatter farmland nearby; when local farmers declined to give up that land, the airstrip was built in its current, more challenging position instead. Hillary purchased the land from local Sherpas for around USD 2,650 and involved them directly in constructing the facility, according to one account flattening the ground for the runway by having local people perform a foot-stomping dance after being supplied with liquor. The runway remained unpaved for decades and was only surfaced with asphalt in 2001. In January 2008, Nepal's then Minister of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Prithvi Subba Gurung, proposed renaming the airport in honour of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first two people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, and the Koirala Interim Cabinet formally approved the change on 10 February 2008, giving the field its current name of Tenzing-Hillary Airport in place of the earlier simple name of Lukla Airport.
The airport remains the principal gateway to the Everest Base Camp trekking region, handling daily passenger flights between Kathmandu or Ramechhap and Lukla during daylight hours in suitable weather, along with the transport of most building materials and cargo into the roadless region to the north. Access is restricted to helicopters and small STOL fixed-wing types such as the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, Dornier 228 and Let L-410 Turbolet. The field is nominally open year-round, but visibility problems close it around half the time during the monsoon season, cancelling a similar proportion of flights, and the airfield is enclosed by a chain-link fence with round-the-clock security patrols by Nepali security forces.