Airports of Nepal नेपालका विमानस्थलहरू

CAAN's airport profile lists 56 airports: 34 in operation (3 international plus 31 domestic), 18 not in operation, and 4 under construction (including the proposed Nijgadh International). Media summaries of the same data sometimes say '55 airports, 35 operational' — counts shift as fields open and close, so Amarnepal cites CAAN's page as primary.

Three: Tribhuvan in Kathmandu (Nepal's only international gateway for 72 years), Gautam Buddha at Bhairahawa (opened 16 May 2022) and Pokhara (opened 1 January 2023). In practice, Tribhuvan still carries virtually all international traffic — as of mid-2025 Gautam Buddha had no scheduled international flights and Pokhara had one weekly service to Lhasa.

Tenzing-Hillary Airport at Lukla has a runway just 527 m long and 30 m wide, on an 11.7% gradient, at 2,845 m elevation — usable only by helicopters and STOL aircraft such as the Twin Otter, Dornier 228 and L-410. It is regularly described as the world's most challenging commercial airstrip, yet handles the gateway traffic for all Everest trekking.

Three years after opening, Gautam Buddha (Bhairahawa) had no scheduled international passenger flights as of August 2025, and Pokhara's only scheduled international service has been a weekly Himalaya Airlines flight to Lhasa. Two structural reasons recur: India has not granted convenient cross-border approach routes, and the services travellers need — visas, labour permits, medical certificates — still require going to Kathmandu. Pokhara also carries a US$215.96 million Chinese loan that Nepal has asked Beijing to convert into a grant.

Kathmandu's Gauchar ('cow pasture') field, where the first aircraft — a Beechcraft Bonanza carrying the Indian ambassador — landed in 1949. King Mahendra named it Tribhuvan Airport on 15 June 1955, the grass runway was rebuilt in concrete in 1957, and it was redesignated Tribhuvan International Airport in 1964.

Sir Edmund Hillary supervised its construction in 1964 for the Himalayan Trust, to fly in materials for his Sherpa school and hospital projects. According to accounts, he bought the sloping land from local Sherpa farmers for US$2,650 after they refused to give up flat valley-bottom fields. It was renamed Tenzing-Hillary Airport in January 2008 and paved only in 2001.

No. All Nepali airlines have been banned from EU airspace since 5 December 2013, when the European Commission added Nepal to the EU Air Safety List after a string of fatal accidents. The ban has been maintained at every review since, including December 2024 — the EU's core concern is that CAAN is both regulator and airport operator, a conflict Parliament has repeatedly failed to fix.