10%

An Extreme Airport

Lukla, Nepal 1984

By Barbara Jo Shipka

March 7^th, 2015

The runway of the Lukla airport in Nepal is at an angle…. It goes uphill for landing and downhill for takeoff. That‘s because it is so short! The uphill end of the runway is the face of a mountain. The downhill end is a drop of several thousand feet to the valley floor. Gravity and incline help the small planes in both landing and takeoff in the thin air. The shaded area with an upward angle to the left in the photo IS the runway…with a ‘Welcome to Lukla‘ sign. Quite breathtaking…in more ways than one.

I had completed my trek some days earlier but no planes were flying. At that time, the Kathmandu airport didn’t have runway lights so the planes could not take off until there was enough daylight. And, in the meantime, by then the cloud would descend and we would be socked in for the rest of the day. I was only one of a long list of people waiting to leave.

I had been told today would be my day. But I’d been told that on several mornings and each time I had enjoyed one more day. So, again today, I watched the clouds moving in.

Three planes made it out before the clouds descended. Sir Edmund Hillary, who had also waited for days right along with all the rest of us, was on the second plane. I boarded the third plane with about ten others. A cheer went up as we managed to clear the runway. We were aloft.

Because of the thin air, us and all of our gear, and the short runway, the plane flew out with less fuel than we needed to get to Kathmandu. Thus, we stopped at a small airport on the Indian plain to refuel. That, in and of itself, was fine. But the temperature was over 100ºF. We, on the other hand had just been in a rather cold place. We were in layers of crusty and smelly trekking gear. Put simply, we smelled. I felt sorry for the pilots who clearly had taken a shower and put on clean clothes that morning.

A program called Most Extreme Airports, broadcast on The History Channel in 2010, rated this airport as the most dangerous airport in the world. Little did I know….

These images are all scans from old 35mm color slides converted to black and white on Photoshop because the color of the slides has deteriorated so much. Thank you Photoshop!

Button Label

Story Told With

Start publishing stories like this