Civil Aviation

While the Lukla Airport is known as the Hillary Airport (with the name of the other mountaineer first to Everest-  Tenzing – often thrown in the mix as ‘Tenzing Hillary Airport’), it’s often news to a lot of people that this wasn’t the first (or the only) airport Sir Edmund Hillary had built in the…

The mutual sanctions and air restrictions resulting either in cancellation or rerouting of flights, increase in ticket prices, issues with titanium sourcing, and higher fuel costs: the Russia and Ukraine war has had a huge impact on the aviation industry among other economic issues. Along with this, the war halted aircraft deliveries to Russia and…

Pradip Bashyal, a BBC journalist based in Kathmandu and writer of the brilliant book “Sherpa” shares his thoughts on the airport that is “considered one of the most dangerous airfields in the world”– Lukla: “The runway at this airport, which is a brief strip of just 527m (1,729ft) starting at the edge of a cliff…

It has been just over a century since passengers have been able to fly commercially. During this time, we have seen giants such as the Airbus A380, which has the capacity to transport more than 850 passengers and set a record for being the biggest commercial aircraft ever. Aircraft like the A380 necessitate a different…

Aviation has undergone a remarkable transformation since the era of the Wright Brothers. We have seen the introduction of bizarre aircraft such as the Caspian Sea Monster, the all-metal monster the Kalinin K-7, and hypersonic aircraft that fly seven times the speed of sound. A helicopter has landed at the top of Mount Everest and…

A report from Forbes pointed out that 2024 was “the deadliest in commercial aviation in six years.” This came against a backdrop of 2023 being the safest year for flying (as reported by IATA). 2025 has seen a number of crashes already- the most notable of them all being the collision between an American Airlines…

Giant airplanes are constructed taking a variety of factors into consideration. Monsters like the whale-ish Airbus Beluga were devised with transporting parts of the Airbus in mind. There are aircraft like the Caspian Sea Monster, which are frightening pieces of engineering built with combat at the helms. Some of the biggest passenger aircraft in the…

Some of the largest airports in the world stretch up to 774 square kilometers. This is almost twice the size of the biggest nation without an airport! The shortest commercial airport in the world, the Juancho E. Irausquin Airport, located on a Caribbean island called Saba, has a width of nearly 400 meters. What is…

Most airliners still look like a tube with wings bolted onto it. That shape has stayed almost unchanged since the Boeing 707 flew in 1957. A double delta blended wing body aircraft breaks that pattern entirely, merging the wing and fuselage into one continuous lifting surface. The concept has moved from wind tunnels to real…