Kathmandu to Guangzhou: Nepal Airlines' Direct China Route Explained (2026)

Key facts

From the trail · Annapurna

• Nepal Airlines launched its first-ever scheduled service to China: Kathmandu–Guangzhou, three flights a week.
• Flights run Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays; flight time is about 4 hours 30 minutes.
• Promotional fares: roughly NPR 30,000 one-way and NPR 50,000 return.
• The route was 15 years in the making — the carrier first applied for landing permits in January 2015.

Nepal Airlines now flies direct to China — the Kathmandu–Guangzhou route, fifteen years in the making. Nepal Airlines has launched its first-ever scheduled service to the country: a Kathmandu–Guangzhou route landing at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, one of China's busiest hubs. For a state airline that has spent years watching foreign carriers fill its skies, this is a genuine milestone — and for the growing wave of Chinese trekkers eyeing Everest and Annapurna, it is a new and direct way in.

The backstory says a lot about how hard international access can be. Nepal Airlines first applied for landing permits in January 2015. Despite an air-services agreement between Nepal and China dating back to 1987, the carrier hit a wall of delays — Chinese authorities cited a lack of airport slots and, at one point, suggested waiting for new airport capacity. Meanwhile, six Chinese airlines were already flying into Nepal, and a private Nepali carrier briefly ran a Beijing service in 2019 before pulling it for weak demand. That this route now exists at all is the headline.

How the route works

The schedule is built for connections. The flight departs Kathmandu at 10 pm and lands in Guangzhou at 4:30 am local time — an overnight hop that drops you into one of southern China's biggest international gateways in time for onward connections across China and Southeast Asia. Three weekly frequencies, on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, give Chinese travellers a regular rhythm to plan around, and give Nepali traders and students a long-awaited direct link.

What this means for trekkers

If you are travelling from China, this matters in a practical way: a direct overnight flight to Kathmandu means you can be acclimatising in the foothills within a day of leaving Guangzhou, instead of burning time on a layover in a third country. Combined with Nepal's free visa for Chinese travellers, the path from a Chinese city to an Everest viewpoint has rarely been shorter.

A note of caution, as always: promotional fares and launch schedules can change, and a single national-carrier route does not replace the broader network of Chinese and Gulf airlines into Kathmandu. Check current timings before you book. But the direction of travel is unmistakable — Nepal is steadily widening its links to its giant northern neighbour, and that is good for trekkers and good for the trail economy.

Ready to put the new access to use? Our 12-day Everest Base Camp Trek is the classic first Himalayan goal, while the 7-day Nepal Classic Tour pairs Kathmandu's heritage with a mountain taste for shorter trips. For the bigger picture on who's arriving and from where, see where Nepal's travellers come from in 2026.

Source: The Kathmandu Post; Republica; OnlineKhabar (2025–2026). Arrival figures: Nepal Tourism Board, April 2026.

Cover photo: SuperJet International via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).