Lukla Airport Everest

Lukla Airport

Prime gateway to Khumbu Valley no doubt Lukla is best alternative among others like walk from Jiri or walk from Phaplu Airport. Lukla is small settlement of Sherpa where a person mostly depends on tourism business like hotel, trekking guide and expedition leaders. On southern part of Lukla there is one tiny airstrip with inclined runway and small parking area. Hardly airport can hold up to four small twin otter at one time. It is short flight from Kathmandu almost around thirty minute and this not less than mountain flight in term of view as entire himalayan range from Kathmandu including Langtang – Gaurishankar and Everest Range can be seen. Runway is inclined and at the last there is sharp right turn toward parking slots. Small control tower is left of runway while landing. There are no such weather forecasting stuffs where people manually inform Kathmandu Control about condition of fog and possibilities of landing. Flight need to pass through narrow corridor of hill ridges which result of mandatory landing after entering the valley cause it is surrounded by hill ridge on entire side.

Lukla Airstrip with inclined runway and flight ready to depart, probably waiting for clear view

Early morning flight are most trusted in case of guaranteed flight as after ten to eleven o’clock there might be dense cloud and fog as well as summit Lamjura Pass might be windy. Although small it is very busy airport with number of regular flight along with some cargo flight and helicopter. Very few airlines with limited aircrafts operate the Kathmandu – Lukla – Kathmandu Flight, i.e. Tara Air, Sita Air and Simrik Air. Flight tariff is expensive almost USD 170 for one-way flight. In past there were several flights that were crashed so it belongs to one of the most dangerous airport in the world. However nowadays with frequent flight cancelation even in case of small doubt fatality rate had decreased dramatically. In a worse case there was cancelation up to ten to twelve successive days resulting on scarcity of food of Lukla, many people had trek down all the way to Jiri and some were lucky enough to charter a helicopter.