Tribhuvan International Airportत्रिभुवन अन्तर्राष्ट्रिय विमानस्थल

Aviation in Nepal is older than its highways, and it began here. In 1949 a four-seat, single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza carrying the Indian ambassador, Sarjit Singh Majithia, landed on the Gauchar ('cow pasture') field east of Kathmandu — cattle reportedly cleared off for the occasion — seven years before a car could drive into the Valley from the border. Secondary sources date the landing precisely to 23 April 1949. Within a year there was scheduled service: on 20 February 1950 an Indian-registered DC-3 Dakota of Himalayan Aviation linked Kathmandu with Patna, Calcutta and Delhi, and the first charter flew from Gauchar to Calcutta the same year.

The pasture became a national institution in stages. On 15 June 1955 King Mahendra inaugurated the field as Tribhuvan Airport, after his late father; in 1957 the grass runway was rebuilt in concrete and the Civil Aviation Department was created; and in 1964 it was redesignated Tribhuvan International Airport — sources that say it was 'renamed TIA in 1955' conflate the naming and the later 'International' designation. The first jet, a Lufthansa Boeing 707, arrived in 1967; in 1972 RNAC began its own Boeing 727 operations and Nepali personnel took over air traffic control from Indian technicians.

On 18 February 1990 King Birendra inaugurated the current international terminal, built between 1985 and 1989. TIA then remained Nepal's only international airport for 72 years in all — from the 1949 landing until Gautam Buddha International opened at Bhairahawa in May 2022 — and even after Bhairahawa and Pokhara opened, it still carries virtually all of Nepal's international traffic.

That monopoly is also the airport's burden: a single runway in a hemmed-in valley, terrain-constrained approaches, chronic congestion and periodic closures after accidents have made TIA a byword for saturation. That saturation is the context for the two new international airports — and for the persistent talk of a mega-airport at Nijgadh.