KathmanduAll 277 passengers on a Turkish Airlines flight evacuated without injury Monday.
The A330 from Istanbul caught fire on the right landing gear, closing Nepal’s sole runway.
Nepal’s tourism economy depends on one runway; no second has received funding or a construction date.
Sources: Yahoo
THE TERRAIN PROBLEM
Kathmandu sits in a bowl ringed by the Himalayas. Approaches require a curved visual descent through the Mahabharat range — there is no straight-in instrument approach from most directions. Pilots must be specifically certified for Tribhuvan, and weather minimums are unusually high.
WHY NO SECOND RUNWAY
The Kathmandu Valley is built out. Any parallel runway would require demolishing densely populated wards or cutting into protected heritage zones around Pashupatinath and Boudhanath. Nijgadh International — a greenfield replacement 175km south — has been planned since 1995 and blocked repeatedly by Supreme Court rulings over deforestation of 2.4 million trees.
THE TOURISM DEPENDENCY
Tourism contributes roughly 7% of Nepal's GDP directly and supports over a million jobs in a workforce of 17 million. Almost all international arrivals — trekkers, mountaineers, pilgrims to Lumbini and Pashupatinath — pass through this one runway. A multi-day closure cascades into cancelled Everest expeditions, empty Thamel guesthouses, and lost remittance-adjacent income.
THE LANDLOCKED CONSTRAINT
Nepal is sandwiched between India and China with no sea access. All imports either come overland through Indian border posts or fly in. The 2015 Indian blockade — sparked by a Madhesi protest after Nepal's new constitution — cut fuel, medicine, and cooking gas for five months. The lesson Nepal took: never depend on a single chokepoint. The lesson it has not yet acted on: its airport is exactly that.
THE POKHARA WHITE ELEPHANT
Nepal's second international airport opened in Pokhara in January 2023, built with a $216 million loan from China's Exim Bank under the Belt and Road Initiative. Eighteen months later it had handled almost no international flights — India refused to grant overflight rights that would make routes commercially viable, citing security concerns. The runway exists; the airspace politics do not.