Simara 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 ...

located in

Jitpur Simara Jitpursimara (also Jeetpursimara or Jeetpur Simara) is a sub-metropolitan city in Bara District in Province No. 2 of southern Nepal that was formed on 10 March 2017 after merging Gadhimai Municipality, Inarwasira, Amlekhganj, as well as parts ...

serving

Bara District Bara District ( ) is one of the seventy-seven districts of Nepal, located in the western part of the Madhesh Province. The district is third richest district in Nepal after Kathmandu and Morang with 3.3% share of total GDP of Nepal and highest ...

, a district in

Madhesh Province Madhesh Province () is a Provinces of Nepal, province of Nepal in the Terai region with an area of covering about 6.5% of the country's total area. It has a population of 6,126,288 as per the 2021 Nepal census, making it Nepal's most densely po ...

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 ...

. It also serves

Birgunj Birgunj () is a metropolitan city in Parsa District in Madhes Pradesh in southern Nepal. It lies south of the capital Kathmandu, attached in the north to Raxaul on the border of the Indian state of Bihar. As an entry point to Nepal from Patn ...

, Nepal's fifth biggest city.

History

The airport was established on 4 July 1958, although there is evidence that the airport existed in some form as early as 1946 and would therefore be the oldest airport in Nepal — this fact is, however, disputed. The airport is operated by 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 ...

Facilities

The airport resides 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.

Airlines and destinations

Statistics

Access

The airport is located near

Tribhuvan Highway The Tribhuvan Highway or NH 02() connects the outskirts of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, with Birganj/Raxaul on the Nepal-India border. National Highway 28 (India), NH 28 and National Highway 28A (India), NH 28A links Raxaul with Lucknow/Bara ...

Accidents and incidents

* 7 May 1946 - A

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

Douglas C-47 Skytrain The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota ( RAF designation) is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II. During the war the C-47 was used for tro ...

overran the runway upon touchdown at Simara Airport and was fully destroyed. There were no fatalities. This is considered to be the first

aviation accident An aviation accident is an event during aircraft operation that results serious injury, death, or significant destruction. An aviation incident is any operating event that compromises safety but does not escalate into an aviation accident. Pre ...

in the

History of Nepal Nepal is a multi-ethnic, multiracial, multicultural, multi-religious, and multilingual country. The most spoken language is Nepali followed by several other ethnic languages. The modern day Kingdom of Nepal was established in 1768 and star ...

. * 30 August 1955 - A

Kalinga Airlines Kalinga Airlines was a private airline based in Calcutta, India. It was founded in 1947 by aviator and politician Biju Patnaik, who was also the airline's chief pilot. The airline was nationalised and merged into Indian Airlines in 1953. It rest ...

Douglas Dakota The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota ( RAF designation) is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II. During the war the C-47 was used for troo ...

lifted off prematurely at Simara Airport in order to avoid hitting someone crossing the runway. Two of the three crew members aboard were killed. * 25 December 1999 - A Skyline Airways De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 crashed 5 minutes after takeoff from Simara Airport on a flight to Kathmandu. All three crew and seven passengers were killed.

References

External links

* {{authority control Airports in Nepal 1958 establishments in Nepal