Biratnagar Airportविराटनगर विमानस्थल

Biratnagar was on Nepali aviation's very first route map. When Royal Nepal Airlines Corporation was formed on 1 July 1958 and began flying two days later — 97 employees and a single Douglas DC-3, taking over domestic routes from Indian Airlines — its first towns were Simra, Biratnagar, Pokhara and Bhairahawa. For a country whose East-West Highway would not be completed for another four decades, the DC-3 was eastern Nepal's fast link to the capital.

RNAC functioned for decades as Nepal's bus network in the sky, and Biratnagar grew into its eastern anchor. The airline's fleet history traces the airport's own: seven more DC-3s by 1964, an HS 748 in 1970, Twin Otters from 1971, and jets on the trunk services from 1972.

Today the geography of Nepali flying has split in two: the STOL strips that pioneered access to the mountains are being retired as roads arrive — CAAN lists 18 airports as not in operation — while the trunk routes, Kathmandu–Pokhara–Bharatpur–Biratnagar among them, carry most of the traffic. Biratnagar sits firmly in the second category: a regional hub on the busy side of the network's great divide.