ON JULY 24, shortly after takeoff, a 50-seater Bombardier CRJ-200 passenger aircraft belonging to Nepal's Saurya Airlines crashed and caught fire while taking off from the Tribhuvan International Airport, in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, killing 18 people on board. Airport officials said only the captain survived.
The Himalayan country is wedged between India and China and is heavily dependent on air connectivity because of its limited road network. Nepal remains isolated from the world's major land, air and sea transport routes.
However, its aviation industry has boomed in recent years, carrying goods and people to hard-to-reach areas. The country has 32 airports, three international and 29 domestic.
Nepal has some of the world’s most challenging runways for aircraft to land. Many are flanked by snow-capped peaks with approaches that sometimes put a pilot’s skills to the ultimate test.
The weather can change quickly in the mountains, creating dangerous flying conditions.
Tribhuvan International Airport is in a valley surrounded by mountains on most sides with a tabletop runway. This is a runway on top of a plateau or hill with one or both ends adjacent to a steep precipice which drops into a deep gorge.
[caption id="attachment_1099738" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Nepal army personnel cordon off a plane crash site at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, on July 24. AP PHOTO -[/caption]
Large aircraft have to fly through an opening on a mountain to land at Tribhuvan Airport.
Tenzing-Hillary Airport, also known as Lukla Airport, is a domestic airport in the town of Lukla, in the Koshi Province of Nepal. It gained worldwide fame when it was rated the most dangerous airport in the world for more than 20 years by a programme titled Most Extreme Airports, broadcast on The History Channel in 2010
The airport is popular because it is the starting point for treks to the Mt Everest base camp.
There are daily flights between Lukla and Kathmandu during daylight hours in good weather. Although the flying distance is short, rain commonly occurs in Lukla while the sun is shining brightly in Kathmandu. High winds, cloud cover and changing visibility often mean flights can be delayed or the airport closed.
The airport was built in 1964 under the supervision of Sir Edmund Hillary, who originally intended to build it on flat farmland. However, local farmers did not want to give up their land, so the airport was built in its current position. Hillary bought the land from local Sherpas for US$2,650 and involved them in building it.
It has been said that Hillary was unhappy with the runway's soil resistance, and his solution was to buy local liquor for the Sherpas and ask them to perform a foot-stomping dance to flatten the land that served as the runway. The runway was not paved until 2001.
In January 2008, the airport was renamed Tenzing-Hillary Airport in honour of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Hillary, the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mt Everest, and to mark their eff
