The World's Most Dangerous Airport

by Libby Tiernan (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

A leap into the unknown Nepal

Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Lukla, Nepal, is widely accepted as an aviophobe’s worst nightmare. With a sharp cliff face at one end and the expanse of the mountains at the other, over or undershooting the 527-metre runway can have fatal consequences. The airport’s single runway is almost 3000 metres up in the air, sloping at 11 degrees, and 26 people have died as a result of incidents in the airport’s 56-year history. All these facts considered means that landing or taking off from Tenzing-Hillary is a task that only pilots who fulfil a long list of experience requirements are allowed to attempt. Waiting in Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, I chewed my sleeve, adamant that certain demise awaited me outside the gate. I was sixteen years old and anxious, cripplingly aware that there was little I could at that moment short of gluing myself to the seat in the departure lounge. I was part of a pack of Girlguides from the North West of England, who decided to trade in sewing and knot-tying for charitable work in the rural areas of Nepal. The crackling voice came over the speaker. “Summit Air 563 to Lukla now boarding.” We made for the departure gate, most of us excited to reach the next point on our travels. I was not so confident we would ever reach it, as our flight had already been delayed several times then cancelled the previous day. This is a regular occurrence for flights to Lukla, since anything as minor as fog or rain can impair a pilot’s ability to land. But to my surprise we were cleared to board. I stood in front of the aircraft in awe and shock. Barely bigger than a minibus and with a similar seating capacity, the craft was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Taking my seat as far away from the window as the aircraft’s dimensions would allow was a move I would regret later on. As the plane took off from Kathmandu, our guide, Dawa, told us a story in an attempt to calm us. Dawa is a Sherpa with an extensive knowledge of just about everything. The airport we were about to fly into has a quaint history, Dawa told us. In 1964, New Zealand native Sir Edmund Hillary visited Lukla and asked the locals if there was anything he could provide. They replied that they would like an airport. Nobody was willing to give up their flat farmland for this airport, so eventually it had to be built in the only available space. The soil on the side of the mountain was too unstable to support aircraft, so for days Hillary led the locals in a sort of stamping dance to flatten the ground. Dawa paused because to the left of us, in breath-taking proximity was the summit of Mount Everest, its triangular peak poking out above the clouds. All my previous concerns for safety were put to one side. The picture-postcard view of the Himalayas combined with the Dudh Kosi River below us made the risk worth taking. (Dawa later informed us that Dudh Kosi comes from a Nepali dialectal phrase meaning ‘Milk River’ in reference to the white appearance of fast-moving water). After an astonishing forty-five minutes in the air it was finally time to descend. My previous thoughts came crashing back to me, and I could do nothing but close my eyes and wait until the landing was over. Landing in Lukla was like stepping into another world. The weather wasn’t dissimilar to the cold and moisture of the North of England, but nowhere in the UK would you see such astounding views of the waterfalls cascading down the Himalayas, or the clouds enveloping children as they play among hairy yaks on the mountainside. By scientific definition, clear air doesn’t have a smell, but clear is the only way to describe the smell of the atmosphere. An area untouched by air pollution on the scale we face in the western world, the landscape of rural Nepal is a picture-postcard of a world without industrial emissions. It just seemed so right that at the end of such a dangerous endeavour lay the image of paradise.