Flying can make people a little uneasy at the best of times. Despite being statistically a very safe mode of transport, nervous flyers often talk about the fear of plunging thousands of feet to their deaths, crashing mid-air or even the possibility of hijacking.
Well anyone who gets hit with a pang of trepidation before getting on a plane may not be advised to read on, because the airport described below is known as one of the most dangerous in the world.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport, or Lukla Airport, in Nepal is found nearly nine-and-a-half thousand feet above sea level and is surrounded by mountains.
Runways at major airports are usually around 7,000-10,000-feet in length, however the runway at Tenzing-Hillary is a shudderingly short 1,729 feet long.
At the end of that relatively tiny runway is the edge of a cliff. At the edge of that cliff is a 2,000-foot drop on one side and a stone wall on the other.
As if that wasn’t enough, Nepal is one of the worst places to have such a precarious runway, as the mountain weather is highly unpredictable, so pilots have to be on their A-game when embarking on their flights from Tenzing-Hillary.
Sudden snow or fog regularly causes cancellations and approaching pilots have been known to turn around and head to Kathmandu if the weather turns.
Due to the perilously short runway, small planes and helicopters are the only aircraft permitted to land at the airport.
Captains also need specialist training, which includes a minimum of 100 short take-offs and landings, a year of experience of flying in Nepal and 10 unblemished flights to Tenzing-Hillary with an instructor.
Despite these measures, the airport still has a terrible history of crashes. As recently as 2019, three people died when a plane veered off the runway and collided with a helicopter.
In 2008, eight people were killed when a plane tried to land. These two incidents are in a list of many.
The question remains, why do people take this highly dangerous flight? The reason is that the town the airport sits in, Lukla, is at the base of the Mount Everest trek.
It’s reachable from Kathmandu in just 40 minutes, whereas other routes, such as by bus and on foot take significantly longer.
