Lukla: 5 Fast Facts About The World’s Most Dangerous Airport

The word “Lukla” in the Sherpa language refers to an “abode of sheep”. Locals say that in the past, the region was rife with this creature, though one would find it next to impossible to locate it these days in the “most-dangerous airport” region. Before the construction of Lula’s iconic airport (LUA), which has been referred to as “bonkers”, trekking to the airport took quite a substantial time- trekkers believe that the airport’s construction has cut down on the time it took to trek to the Everest base Camp by as much as seven days. 

This extraordinary airport is sometimes referred to as Lukla STOLport (an acronym for Short Take off and Landing Airport), Lukla ALTIport (which is defined as “a small airport in a mountainous area with a steep gradient runway, used for landing up the slope and for take-off down the slope, thereby making use of only one approach/departure area.”), or in the official language of the Civil Aviation Authorty of Nepal, simply as Lukla Aerodrome.

Aviation Vocabulary-Aerodrome: In Pictures

Regardless of the terminologies used to describe this most precariously positioned airport, it, like the Everest region itself, has been a “magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics”, to borrow the phrase of John Krauker. Let’s take a look at five fast facts about the world’s most dangerous airport in the world- Lukla.

5. It isn’t the most dangerous airport in Nepal, let alone the world

Nepali Pilots and ATC don’t agree on this notion

The students and practitioners of aviation in Nepal don’t believe that Lukla Airport is the most dangerous airport in Nepal. Captain Rabindra Dangol, who has been an instructor pilot for two decades in Nepal (and one who also trains pilots to fly to Lukla Airport) doesn’t quite buy the hype around Lukla’s supposed most-dangerousness:

“One has to draw a distinction between technical aspects and practical aspects of operating in a particular airport. Technically, one might reason that Lukla Airport is extremely dangerous becasue after the aircraft has inched past a certain point (while approaching Lukla), there’s no possibility of a go-around. But in terms of practicality, I have found operating to/from Phaplu airport more challenging than LUA”.

The inability of performing a go-around was described by the author of the book titled “Sherpa” as “even when there is a strong wind, no visibility or any other obstacles on the runway, once an airplane crosses the ‘No Go’ zone, it’s only ‘Go Go’, with no chance of turning back”. However, there have been instances when pilots have performed a go-around in Lukla, and one has even been captured in a video. 

Ujjwal Tiwari, an Air Traffic Controller, who has served in Lukla for two years and was also an ATC in other airports in the Himalayas of Nepal, said that in the various talks he has had with numerous pilots who have flown to Lukla, no one has confided LUA as dangerous as it is perceived. He said, “never have I ever found Lukla as being the most challenging or dangerous airport for landing”. He further believed that airports, such as the one in:

• Rara (Talcha Airport)
• Dolpa (Juphal Airport)

 are more challenging because the crosswind in these two airfields might necessitate a go-around at any time during approach.

One of the reasons why Lukla gets branded as “the most-dangerous” might simply be because a moniker such as that might mean more publicity for the Everest Region. More publicity might equate greater flow of tourists and greater revenue in the region. You can read about this matter in detail in our guide below:

Lukla Airport: Myths vs Facts of “the most dangerous airport”

4. Other airports in the Everest region are more dangerous

Mingbo being the most glaring example

Phaplu Airport, an airport in the Everest region that Captain Rabindra found more challenging than Lukla, lies at an altitude of 2,413 meter – around 500 meters lower than Lukla. When the wife of Sir Edmund Hillary (the man who was seminal in the construction of Lukla Airport) was headed to Phaplu Airport on a Pilatus PC-6 when the aircraft crashed and killed all occupants on theboard. 

Before the construction of Lukla Airport, or Phaplu Airport for that matter, Sir Edmund Hillary had constructed an airport that was far more dangerous than Lukla- the Mingbo Airport. The airport was located at an altitude of  4,650 meters. A Pilatus Porter used to operate in and out of the airport- and possibly before the government of Nepal even knew about it: the airport was cardinal in supplying the materials needed for the construction of Khumjung Secondary School and providing relief materials for the Tibetan refugees in the 1960s. After the government knew about Mingbo’s operation, a civil aviation authority personnel was sent to look at the airport’s feasibility. The turbulence (and the downright fright) experienced during the flight caused him to  “stagger out of the aircraft and vomit noisily”. The airport was shut down after this experience, though an exemption for one flight was later granted. You can read about it in our guide below:

More dangerous than Lukla: Mingbo – the Forgotten Airport

The Everest region is also home to Syangboche aerodrome (3,780 meters), an airport that is located near Khumjung village. The airport can turn into a frozen desert in the winter. The greater unpredictability of the weather and a stronger wind in Syangboche would also mean that it would be more dangerous than Lukla. 

Airports in the district where Lukla lies	Runway	Starting year
Syangboche Airport	405 m	Not Given, though the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) claims that it had seasonal servicability
Phaplu Airport	680 m	1976
Kangeldanda Airport	520 m	2003

After people in Lukla orchestrated demonstrations against Syangboche’s operations, flights to Syangboche were barred. Much in the way the construction of Lukla Airport had cut down the time to trek to the Everest Base Camp, Syangboche Airport hoped to do the same. However, operations in Syangboche would mean that people would directly fly to Syangboche: Lukla would, therefore, be placed in a grave danger of being bypassed by trekkers. 

3. The helicopter  landed on the top of Mount Everest tookoff from Lukla 

Piloted by an Airbus helicopter test pilot

In 2005, an Airbus A350B3 helicopter was able to land at the top of Everest. The chopper was piloted by helicopter pilot Didier Delsalle, and in doing so, he achieved the lightest landing performed by a helicopter, ever. Curiously, no person before or after Delsalle has been able to climb to the top of Everest.

When the Airbus A350B3 was being made, Didier Delsalle proposed that he would try to land at the top of Everest. But Airbus was reticent with the flight, as a crash would have put an indelible stain on the chopper’s prospects. Nonetheless, after years of trying, the aerospace manufacturer acquiesced, and Dider Delsalle landed what was dubbed during its flight as “a mystery chopper” to the summit of Mount Everest. According to the video of this historic flight captured by Airbus, the flight originated in and subsequently landed at Lukla Airport itself. 

Specifications of the helicopter that landed at the top of Everest

Service Ceiling	23000 ft
Rate of Climb	1959 fpm
Takeoff Power	632 kW
Max T/O Weight	6173 Lb

One of the more striking facts about this historic flight was that the chopper’s service ceiling was less than the altitude of Everest’s top. Airbus had organized the flight to demonstrate that the A350’s capabilities extended beyond the limits that were expressed by the manufacturer. Incidentally, Delsalle also rid the chopper of the non-essential items to make the flight. You can read about this historic flight in our guide below.

Why Helicopters Can’t Fly to the Top of Mount Everest

2. Lukla is one of the cheapest aerodrome to be constructed

The second-cheapest airport in the Everest region

When Sir Edmund Hillary built the Mingbo airstrip, it cost him merely $900. This prompted him to claim that the Mingbo Airstrip might have been one of the cheapest airstrips to have been ever constructed. Much of the $900 was down to the labor fees paid to the Sherpa locals, who helped level the field by maneuvering the large boulders in Mingbo into pits they had dug specifically to bury the large rocks.

In comparison, acquiring the land needed for the Lukla Airport, cost Hillary merely $600. Although he did say that it was “a substantial sum in that area in those days”, one can reminisce upon this figure, the sort of fame the airport has been able to garner, and feel that the airport was acquired at a bargain. [Take Mumbai’s Navi airport, in contrast. The airport necessitated almost $2 billion construction cost] To level the ground of Lukla Airport, Lukla deployed the local Sherpas, in a rather amusing way:

“…. I was still not entirely happy with the top surface of the field which was rather soft. I decided to use a simple but practical method to improve this. Sherpa dancing is very vigorous and involves much stamping of the feet. We purchased large quantities of chang and then employed fifty Sherpas to link arms and stamp their way backwards and forwards across the field. A very festive mood prevailed and the earth received a most resounding thumping. Two days of this rather reduced the Sherpas’ enthusiasm for the dance but produced a firm and smooth surface for our airfield.”

Hillary had paid a total of $2,000 for land and labor. If the construction cost of an airport that was defunct only after a few months of operation [Mingbo Aistrip (of $900)] can makes it the cheapest, what should one make of the $2,000 for the construction costs of an airport that has gone to make history? One should also factor in that Lukla Airport was constructed a decade after Mingbo was. 

Let’s take a look at how the costs of Lukla Airport compare with some costs associated with other airport projects in Nepal.

Name of the airport project	Associated costs
Pokhara Airport	Construction cost $216 million
Lukla Helipad construction (in 2019)	$2.2 million
Nijgadh Airport (proposed)	Expected costs of construction are around $3.45 billion

5. Lukla’s accident history isn’t as frightening as it has been perceived

When Lukla Airport’s most-dangerousness is often discussed, people who’ve not been here feel that the airport must have an accident history that is rife with hull losses and hundreds of lives lost. But that is not quite the case. According to the data in the Aviation Safety Network, there have been seven incidents of aircraft accidents with destination Lukla Airport, and three of aircraft that departed Lukla. In all of these accidents, fifty-six people have lost their lives. This number is smaller than the number of people who departed in the crash of Yeti Airlines Flight 691. 

One of the accidents of an aircraft headed to Lukla was that of a Dornier Do-228 (registered 9N-AHA) operated by Sita Airlines. The aircraft crashed following a collision with a bird – a fact that has no relevance to the dangerous status of Lukla Airport. Agni Air 9N-AHE, which was headed to Lukla Airport in August 2010, crashed near Bastipur, Makwanpur- a district that is closer to Kathmandu than it is to the Everest region. After it was reported that Lukla Airport was closed due to inclement weather, the plane encountered “a generator malfunction but did not declare an emergency”. Accident reports claim that the pilot “was in contact with a company flight on the ground at Kathmandu and reported trying to switch to the backup generator. This did not work and he then tried to ‘recycle’ the battery pack”. These accidents had claimed 19 and 14 lives, respectively. Lukla’s dangerousness had played no part in the accidents.

Let’s quickly run through three other major accidents in Lukla Airport:

• One of the causes of the crash of the crash of Yeti Airlines’ DHC-6 300 Twin Otter [registered 9N-AFE] in 2008 was the “Failure on the part of regulatory body and company safety management to check the wrong practices being followed by pilots especially in STOL airfields like Lukla on a timely basis.”
• Investigations into the crash of Goma Airlines’ 9N-AKY showed that the ATS officer had failed to close the airport (during deteriorating weather) as per the approved SOP. The following pictures reveal how inclement the weather conditions were in this airport, where aircraft can only operate in Visual Fight Rules (VFR) conditions, moments before the crash.
• In 2019, Lukla Airport was witness to the crash of a Let L410UPV-E20 (registration 9N-AMH) operated by Summit Air first collided with Manang Air’s helicopter, AS350B3e (registration 9N-ALC), and then with Shree Airlines’ helicopter, AS350B3e (registration 9N-ALK). [After this crash, a separate helipad has been constructed in Lukla].

While one could argue that the weather conditions in Lukla played their part in the crash of the first two (out of the three) crashes we mentioned in the bullet points above, it was more down to the unsafe practices of the aviation personnel, rather than the geography of the airport – th every factor that is often visaulized when we’re thinking of the airport that is nestled between a veritable wall and a gorge. It has been more than six years since we’ve seen a fatal accident in Lukla. For an airport that is the most dangerous in the world, this is a remarkable achievement.