Inside the world’s ‘most dangerous airport’ | World | News
A small airport in Nepal has gained international fame for how difficult it can be to land there.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport is a domestic air hub in the tiny town of Lukla, eastern Nepal.
Rising more than 9,300 feet above the sea, this airport, also known as Lukla Airport, sees aeroplanes arriving and leaving daily from the international airport in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
While it is only a 30-minute flight away, Lukla Airport is very different from the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, as the small, domestic air hub presents so many challenges to pilots it has been dubbed the world’s most dangerous.
Despite being surrounded by difficult terrain, the airport doesn’t give pilots much margin for error.
Its 1,729-foot-long runway faces at the southern end a steeply angled drop into the valley below and just beyond its northern end there is a mountainous wall. The length of this runway pales in comparison with those of most international airports around the world, which normally have 10,000-foot-long strips to allow planes to safely slow down as they land.
The runway at Lukla Airport slopes uphill with a gradient of nearly 12 percent to help aircraft slow down.
Moreover, the reduced air density found at this altitude makes it more challenging to slow the plane down than at sea level and impacts negatively the amount of power generated by aircraft engines when they are trying to lift off.
The strong south-west winds blowing in the area regularly prompt the closure of the airport from mid to late morning.
Given the challenging factors at this airport, paired with the low visibility that can at times be encountered due to the unpredictable weather in the Himalayas, only helicopters and small fixed-wing propellor planes are permitted to land in Lukla.
Moreover, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal only allows pilots with certain credentials – including having successfully completed 10 flights into Lukla with a certified instructor – to fly to and from Tenzing-Hillary Airport.
Several incidents have happened at the airport over the years, with the first recorded dating back to October 1973, when a Royal Nepal Airlines DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 was damaged beyond repair upon landing, although no crewmember or passenger was injured. The latest deadly incident happened in May 2017.
Lukla Airport, renamed Tenzing-Hillary in 2008 in honour of the first climbers confirmed to ever reach the summit of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, was built in the mid-1960s to transport materials to Lukla and villages north of it, as there is no road to this region.
But it is also used by civilian passengers who want to reach the top of the Everest. Before the launch of this small air hub, hikers had to trek for several days after flying into Nepal.
