Ramechhap Airport is a

domestic airport A domestic airport is an airport that handles only flights within the same country. Domestic airports do not have customs and immigration facilities and so cannot handle flights to or from a foreign airport. These airports often have short r ...

serving the municipality of Manthali, the district headquarters of

Ramechhap District Ramechhap District (), a part of Bagmati Province, is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal. The district, also known as Wallo Kirat Ramechhap, has its district headquarters in Manthali and covers an area of . In 2011, the district had a ...

located in the

Tamakoshi River The Tamakoshi River () is part of the Koshi or Sapta Koshi river system in Nepalese Himalayas. It originates from the (or Rongshar Tsangpo) and Lapchi Gang rivers close to the Nepal-Tibet border. It flows in a southern direction through Bagm ...

valley in

Bagmati Province Bagmati Province (, ''Bāgmatī pradēśa'') is one of the seven Provinces of Nepal, provinces of Nepal established by the constitution of Nepal. Bagmati is Nepal's second-most populous province and fifth largest province by area. It is bordered ...

Nepal Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mainly situated in the Himalayas, but also includes parts of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. It borders the Tibet Autonomous Region of China Ch ...

. As of October 2022, most flights to

Lukla Airport Tenzing-Hillary Airport (, ), also known as Lukla Airport, is a domestic airport and altiport in the town of Lukla, in Khumbu Pasanglhamu, Solukhumbu District, Koshi Province of Nepal. The airport has gained worldwide fame, both for its unusua ...

are operated from Ramechhap Airport.

History

thumbnail, Nepalese service members offload supplies from a U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey assigned to Joint Task Force 505 humanitarian assistance and disaster relief at Manthali, the 2015 earthquake. The airport was opened in October 1979. In 2015, the airport was closed for 13 months to allow runway renovations and upgrade from a clay and grass surface to asphalt, reopening in August 2016. In 2019, as the sole runway of

Tribhuvan International Airport Tribhuvan International Airport (, , colloquially referred to as TIA) is an international airport located in Kathmandu, Bagmati, Nepal. It has a tabletop runway, a domestic terminal and an international terminal. As the country's main internat ...

Kathmandu Kathmandu () is the capital and largest city of Nepal, situated in the central part of the country within the Kathmandu Valley. As per the 2021 Nepal census, it has a population of 845,767 residing in 105,649 households, with approximately 4 mi ...

was being renovated and the airport was closed over night, all flights to

Lukla Lukla ( ) is a small town in the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu rural municipality of the Solukhumbu District in the Koshi Province of northeastern Nepal. Situated at above sea level, it is a popular place for visitors to the Himalayas near Mount Everest ...

were operated from Ramechhap Airport, the closest airport to Kathmandu, as these flights need to take off early in the morning to not get caught in dangerous winds in Lukla. During peak, the airport served 24 flights per day, However, the airport had serious problems handling the mass of tourists traveling to Lukla. Following this, plans were developed to upgrade the airport. By 2020, flights to Lukla were operated from Kathmandu again, and with

Tara Air Tara Air Pvt. Ltd. is an airline headquartered in Kathmandu, Nepal. It is a subsidiary of Yeti Airlines. Tara Air was formed in 2009 using aircraft from the Yeti Airlines fleet and is based at Tribhuvan International Airport, with a secondary hub ...

's discontinuation of the flight to Kathmandu, the airport was left without scheduled operations. In 2022, the

Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN, ) is an independent civil aviation regulator. It was established as a Nepali government body in 1998 and is headquartered in Kathmandu. Before its formation, the functions of the CAAN had been perform ...

decided that flight to Lukla were to be operated from Ramechhap Airport instead of Kathmandu again. Despite this being the second instance, critics argued that the airport and its surrounding infrastructure was still not sufficiently developed.

Facilities

The airport is at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has one

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

which is in length. The runway is 20 m wide in breadth and build of Asphalt Concrete. Parking capacity of Manthali airport is 4, D228 Type Aircraft. Ramechhap Airport Nepal

Airlines and destinations

Access

The airport is located near Feeder Road 32. It is connected to

via

BP Highway The BP Highway or NH13 (previously: H06) is a highway in eastern Nepal that links Kathmandu Valley with the Eastern Terai region. It is named after the former leader of Nepal, BP Koirala. This highway is the shortest link between Kathmandu vall ...

Incidents and accidents

* 22 April 2019 – A

Dornier 228 The Dornier 228 is a twin-turboprop STOL utility aircraft, designed and first manufactured by Dornier GmbH (later DASA Dornier, Fairchild-Dornier) from 1981 until 1998. 245 were built in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. In 1983, Hindustan Aeronautics ...

aircraft skidded off the runway upon landing at Ramechhap Airport. Due to adverse weather, the flight from

was diverted to Ramechhap Airport. All of the crew and passengers evacuated the aircraft safely. * 20 March 2020 – A

Summit Air Summit Air (8199400 Canada Inc. is a Canadian airline headquartered in Yellowknife that operates scheduled, charter and cargo aviation throughout the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, and Yukon. Summit Air is a member of the Ledcor Group of Com ...

Let 410 The Let L-410 Turbolet is a twin-engine short-range transport aircraft designed and produced by the Czech aircraft manufacturer Let Kunovice (named Aircraft Industries since 2005). It was developed as the ''L-400'' during the 1960s in response t ...

en route from Lukla to Kathmandu made an emergency landing at Ramechhap Airport due to an engine failure. All of the crew and passengers evacuated the aircraft safely.

References

External links

* {{authority control Airports in Nepal Buildings and structures in Ramechhap District 1979 establishments in Nepal