The Only Helicopter Ever to Land on the Summit of Everest — and Why Nobody Has Done It Since

At 07:08 on the morning of 14 May 2005, a small helicopter did something most people in aviation considered impossible: it set its skids down on the summit of Mount Everest, 8,848 metres above sea level. The pilot, a French former fighter pilot named Didier Delsalle, sat alone on the highest point on Earth for exactly 3 minutes and 50 seconds. Then he lifted off, flew back down to Lukla — and the next morning, did the whole thing again.

Twenty-one years later, nobody has ever repeated it. As guides who watch helicopters work the Khumbu every single season, we think this is one of the great untold stories of the mountain — and it explains a lot about what helicopters can and cannot do for trekkers today.

The flight everyone said couldn't be done

Delsalle was a test pilot for Eurocopter, and his machine was, remarkably, an almost standard AS350 B3 "Squirrel" — the same type that flies rescue missions in Nepal to this day. His team stripped about 120 kg from it, including the passenger seats, to extend its range and coax more performance from the thin air.

And the air is the whole problem. At 8,848 metres, air density is only about a third of what it is at sea level — so the rotor blades have far less to bite into and the engine far less oxygen to burn. Then there is the wind: the summit sits in the jet stream's neighbourhood, where gusts can pass 200 km/h. Delsalle described updraughts of roughly 65 knots (about 120 km/h) at the top — strong enough, in his words, to throw the aircraft off the peak the moment he lowered the power. He held the machine against the snow with the rotors still flying, waited out the required time for the record, and flew home. The World Air Sports Federation (FAI) certified it as the highest helicopter landing in history — and he returned on 15 May and landed again, "to make sure it's repeatable." No one else has ever managed it.

What helicopters really do on Everest today

Delsalle's flight was an empty, stripped aircraft flown by a factory test pilot in a rare weather window. Day-to-day Himalayan flying happens much lower — but it has its own records. On 21 May 2013, Italian pilot Maurizio Folini, flying the same AS350 B3 type, pulled an injured climber off Everest at 7,800 metres on a longline — the highest helicopter rescue ever performed, with the casualty carried on a rope beneath the aircraft because landing was out of the question.

The good news: you can legally fly the same skies Delsalle did — just a little lower. An Everest Base Camp helicopter tour lands at Kala Patthar (5,545 m) for a sunrise view of the summit pyramid, and many trekkers now walk in and fly out of the Khumbu by heli. It remains, minute for minute, the most spectacular flying on the planet — twenty-one years after one French test pilot proved just how far a helicopter can go.

Source: FAI — World Air Sports Federation

Cover photo: Clinton Weaver via Pexels (Pexels License).