Effort started on Friday to airlift over 2,500 people, including tourists, their porters and their guides, from Lukla where they have been stranded for five days with all commercial flights grounded due to inclement weather. 

About 100 people were airlifted to Kathmandu by helicopters of commercial airliners from a landing strip located one-and-a-hour trek downhill of Lukla as per a report in Myrepublica by samiksha Koirala.

Meanwhile, a Nepal Army (NA) helicopter will start rescuing the stranded from Lukla airport itself from Saturday. 

The build-up of stranded people started in Lukla in late-October when only limited flights were operated, also due to bad weather. But from October 31, no flight was conducted at all, thus swelling up the number of visitors in the village, which is a famous gateway to Mt Everest. 

The Himalayan Rescue Association (HRA) said that by Friday, there were above 2,000 foreigners and 500 Nepalis stranded there. 

NA Spokesperson Ramindra Chhetri said, “We had received letter from the tourism ministry and the use of Army chopper has been approved for the rescue.” 

He further said that if the weather condition is favorable, Mi-17 will start the rescue operation from Saturday morning. “We had sent a bell helicopter for rescue (Friday) but it could not land at Lukla airport because of poor visibility,” he added.

Private operators, on the other hand, operated around 20 flights to Surke, a landing strip located one-and-a-half-hour walk downhill of Lukla airport, from where the tourists were flown to Kathmandu. Surke was chosen for landing after choppers couldn´t land at Lukla airport. Mountain, Fishtail, Dynasty and Simrik Air helicopters rescued around 100 tourists on Friday. 



Pokhara-Jomsom flights cancelled too

Tourist planning to visit Jomsom have been disappointed as no flights came into operation in the Pokhara-Jomsom sector for the past three days. 

According to officials at Pokhara Airport, there have been no flights in Pokhara-Kathmandu sector as well. “Hundreds of tourist have been waiting for hours everyday at the airport,” one of the employees of the airport said.

Some of the tourists have returned back to capital by road after there was no sign of weather to improve. Altogether, around two dozen scheduled flights have been suspended on a daily basis.

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