Tenzing-Hillary Airport (Lukla)तेन्जिङ–हिलारी विमानस्थल (लुक्ला)

Lukla's airstrip was built in 1964 under Sir Edmund Hillary's supervision, for the Himalayan Trust, to fly in materials for his Sherpa school and hospital projects. According to accounts compiled from Trust history, Hillary bought the sloping hillside from local Sherpa farmers for US$2,650 after they refused to give up their flat, valley-bottom fields — which is why the runway tilts the way it does.

The numbers explain its reputation: 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 short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) types such as the Twin Otter, Dornier 228 and L-410. It was paved only in 2001 and renamed Tenzing-Hillary Airport in January 2008, honouring both members of the first Everest summit team. It is regularly described as the world's most challenging commercial airstrip.

Lukla is also the most famous survivor of a much larger system: the dozens of short mountain strips Nepal built from the 1960s–70s as its answer to terrain that defeated road-builders. While new roads have pushed many of those pioneer strips out of operation — CAAN currently lists 18 airports as not in operation — Lukla's role as the gateway for Everest trekking keeps it busier than ever: each trekking season its slope handles what has been called the densest bush-flying operation in the world.