Lukla flights from Ramechhap in peak season

For decades, the Everest trek began at Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International Airport with a flight of about 35 minutes to Lukla. As trekking grew, dozens of small Lukla flights each morning competed for space with international and other domestic traffic on Kathmandu's single runway. From 2019 the authorities began moving most Lukla flights in the peak seasons to Manthali airport in Ramechhap district, south-east of Kathmandu.

In recent years this has applied roughly from April to May and from October to November, and in some years for longer. Outside those months, many flights still leave from Kathmandu. The arrangement is decided each season by the civil aviation authorities and the airlines, so check current status before you travel. We confirm which airport your flight uses when we book the tickets, and plan the transfer around it.

Lukla flights leave at first light, because mornings have the clearest air and cloud builds up the valleys by late morning. From Ramechhap, that means a night drive. The table shows a typical morning in October, as we see it most weeks of the season. Times shift with sunrise and with the airline's slot.

Lukla's airstrip was built in 1964 by Edmund Hillary and the Sherpas he worked with, to bring in materials for the schools and clinics of the Himalayan Trust. It was renamed Tenzing-Hillary Airport in 2008. The runway is about 527 m long and slopes at roughly 12 percent, uphill for landing and downhill for take-off. One end stops at the mountainside and the other drops to the valley.

Only small short-take-off aircraft use it, mostly Twin Otters, Dornier 228s and Let L-410s with about 14 to 19 seats. Pilots fly by sight, which is why weather matters more than anything else. Cloud at Lukla, at Ramechhap or over the ridges in between stops flights, even when the sky above you looks clear. Each aircraft flies several rotations a morning, so a two-hour delay to the first flight pushes every later flight back too.

On the way in, sit on the left side of the aircraft for the mountains to the north; on the way back, sit on the right.

The usual baggage allowance is 15 kg per person in total, normally about 10 kg checked and 5 kg in hand. Extra weight is charged per kilo if there is room, and in busy weeks it may go on a later flight. Leave everything you do not need on the trek at your Kathmandu hotel; every trekking hotel stores bags for free.

Manthali is a small airport. There is a waiting hall that is crowded in peak weeks, simple toilets and a few tea stalls outside. On a bad weather morning you may wait there for several hours, and sometimes flights are cancelled for the day and you drive back or stay nearby. Bring what makes waiting bearable.

• A warm layer and a hat for the pre-dawn wait, which can be cold even in October.
• Water, snacks and the packed breakfast the hotel gives you.
• Passport, permits and medicines in your hand luggage, never in the porter duffel.
• A book or downloaded films; mobile data at the airport is slow when the hall is full.
• Patience: no one can make the cloud at Lukla lift, and pressure on pilots is the last thing anyone wants.

Most trekkers worry about the flight in, but the flight out is the one that decides whether you make your connection home. Your guide confirms your seat with the airline office in Lukla the afternoon before, and you are usually told the evening before which rotation you are on. Early rotations are the safest, because cloud tends to build through the morning.

On the morning itself, you walk a few minutes from the lodge to the terminal, check in, have bags weighed again and wait in a small hall above the runway. When the first aircraft from Ramechhap or Kathmandu appears over the ridge, the hall goes quiet. Planes turn round in a few minutes, so be at the gate when your name is called.

If the flight lands at Ramechhap, a car is waiting for the 4 to 5 hour drive back to Kathmandu, and you are usually at your hotel by early afternoon. If cloud closes Lukla for the day, you stay another night in the same lodge and go on the first flights the next morning. Lodges in Lukla are used to this.

Our rule is the same in every season: at least one spare day in Kathmandu after the trek, and two from December to February and from June to September. On the way in, a day's delay can be absorbed by shortening the trek or using a rest day. On the way out there is no shortcut except a helicopter, and an international flight the day after landing from Lukla is a gamble. If the spare day is not needed, it becomes a free day for Patan or Boudhanath.

When flights are cancelled for a day or more, helicopter operators sell shared seats between Lukla and Ramechhap or Kathmandu. A shared seat has typically cost several hundred US dollars per person in recent seasons, more when demand is high. Policies that cover trekking usually pay for a helicopter in a medical emergency, but often not for weather delays alone. Read your policy before you leave home.

You can avoid the flight in altogether. From Phaplu or Salleri in Solu, reached by road in about 9 to 11 hours from Kathmandu, the old trail through Junbesi, Nunthala and Kharikhola reaches Lukla in five to six days. The walk acclimatises you naturally, passes Sherpa and Rai villages that most trekkers fly over, and leaves only the flight out to plan around.

Before you leave Lukla on foot, your guide shows or buys the local municipality permit, which the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality charges every foreign trekker. The Sagarmatha National Park entry permit is checked at Monjo, below Namche Bazaar. Since April 2023 Nepal requires foreign trekkers in national parks and conservation areas to trek with a licensed guide; in the Khumbu, where the local municipality runs its own permit, the rule has been applied unevenly. We trek with licensed guides on every route. Check current status before you travel.

The trail itself starts at the stone arch at the top of Lukla's main street. From there it is about 3 to 4 hours to Phakding, and the next day you climb to Namche Bazaar at 3,440 m, where the first acclimatisation day of almost every Everest trek is spent.