Every Everest Trekker Flies Through the World's Most Dangerous Airport — Here's Why There's No Other Way In

There is no road to Everest Base Camp. No railway, no highway, not even a rough jeep track for the final week of the approach. For almost every one of the tens of thousands of foreigners who trek toward Everest each year, the journey begins the same way: a short flight from Kathmandu, or from Ramechhap in the busiest weeks, that ends on a runway shorter than five city blocks, cut into a mountainside at 2,845 metres.

Tenzing-Hillary Airport, still known to almost everyone simply as Lukla, was built in 1964 under the personal supervision of Sir Edmund Hillary, who needed a way to fly supplies into the Khumbu for the schools and hospitals his Himalayan Trust was building. It started as bare compacted soil and was not paved until 2001. In 2008, the government renamed it Tenzing-Hillary Airport in honour of Tenzing Norgay and Hillary, the first two men confirmed to have reached Everest's summit. In 2010, The History Channel's documentary series Most Extreme Airports gave the runway a different kind of fame, ranking it the single most dangerous airport in the world.

The danger isn't the elevation alone — a handful of other airstrips sit higher. It's the combination: a mountain wall rises immediately off the northern end of the runway, and the southern end simply stops at a cliff into the valley below. There is nowhere to abort. If an approach isn't lined up correctly there is no go-around procedure — the aircraft has to land — which is why only pilots meeting strict experience minimums are certified for the route, and why the airport closes at a moment's notice whenever cloud or crosswind moves in.

What this means for trekkers

If the runway itself is the part of the trip you'd rather not think about, it isn't the only way in. A helicopter can cover the same route directly from Kathmandu without the fixed-wing approach, on our Everest Base Camp helicopter tour or the trek-in, heli-out itinerary. Most travellers still fly Lukla both ways without incident, on routes like our 14-day Everest Base Camp trek — for the vast majority, the ten minutes of a Lukla landing turn out to be, by a wide margin, the least eventful part of a two-week trek to 5,364 metres.

Source: Wikipedia — Tenzing-Hillary Airport, citing The History Channel's Most Extreme Airports (2010) and published pilot-certification requirements for the route.

Cover photo: Nepal Trek Adventures via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).