Gautam Buddha International Airportगौतमबुद्ध अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय विमानस्थल

Gautam Buddha International Airport (GBIA) at Bhairahawa ended Tribhuvan's 72-year monopoly as Nepal's only international gateway. PM Sher Bahadur Deuba inaugurated it on 16 May 2022 — Buddha Jayanti — with the first international service flown by Kuwait's Jazeera Airways; the Kathmandu Post records commercial operations beginning with a first departure at 07:07 on 17 May, so reports split between 16 and 17 May depending on whether they count the inauguration or the first scheduled flight.

Of Nepal's two new international airports, GBIA was the responsible project: financed mainly by the Asian Development Bank (≈US$37 million in loans and grants) plus the OPEC Fund (≈US$11 million), built by a Chinese contractor (Northwest Civil Aviation, from October 2014) with a 3,000 m × 45 m runway, and sited sensibly to serve Lumbini pilgrimage traffic and the migrant-worker belt of the surrounding province. Reported aggregate costs vary widely between construction-only and land-inclusive figures, so no single headline cost is quoted here.

The honest status is bleak: as of August 2025 GBIA had no scheduled international passenger flights at all. Jazeera Airways, flydubai, Thai AirAsia and others came and went — load factors reached 77%, yet services proved unsustainable because every practical service a traveller needs (visas, labour permits, medical certificates) still requires going to Kathmandu, and India has not granted convenient low-level cross-border entry routes, adding cost to every approach. Hotels built around the airport are being repossessed. Nepali commentators routinely group it with Pokhara as a 'white elephant'; the facts above are left to speak for themselves.