Purna Chudal, chief of domestic airport division of Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) said, “We were not able to operate a single schedule flight from Sunday and only some helicopters were able to make charter flight from Tuesday.” [break]
Chudal said although there was no problem in the weather in Kathmandu, the flights could not be operated because of bad weather in Lukla.
According to Chudal, around 35 daily schedule flights of Tara Air, Yeti Airlines, Agni Air, Sita Air and Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) were cancelled during the last four days. “The weather is too bad and even helicopters could not operate flights to Lukla,” he said the choppers were out of Surke about one and half hour walk from Lukla Airport.
Helicopter operators Simrik Air, Fishtail Air, Dynasty Air and Mountain Air operated 12 flights to Surke on Wednesday following little improvement in the weather.
As this is the beginning of the season for Everest base camp trek, less than 100 tourists have been left stranded at Lukla. “The number of returning tourist is few as this is just the beginning of the season,” Mahendra Singh Thapa, president of Trekking Agencies Association of Nepal (TAAN) who operates Equator Treks and Expedition said.
Thapa further said more than 2,000 tourists were affected by the bad weather conditions.
Trekking operators said that some of the tourists had cancel the trip after waiting for four days and some of them had requested to divert thire trip to other route. “Most of the groups have been diverted to Annapurna Trek,” said he.
He further said they were planning to request helicopters of Nepal Army to help them in operation if the weather continued to deteriorate for few more days.
The gateway to Mt. Everest, Everest base camp trek attracts thousands of tourists in autumn season. According to the government statistics 34,645 tourists visited Sagarmatha National Park in 2011.
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