04/07/2017
During the trek in the Himalayas we had a reserve day we could use in case of bad weather. For the whole trek we were very lucky with the weather so we did not use the extra day, but on the way back, the weather started getting worse, and we were running the risk of catching non-flight weather in Lukla airport, a highly undesirable situation as one of the guys in our group had his flight back home from Kathmandu in 2 days after we got back down. So we walked about 19km on the last day to go down to Lukla early to have a reserve day for the flight.
I have already told about the airport in Lukla. It is one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Seeing it sunk in thick fog with the surrounding mountains completely covered with a hopeless white curtain and listening to the non-stop pounding of the rain on the metal roof of the lodge was not reassuring at all. The day we got down to Lukla there were not flights – zero visibility and heavy rain. The forecast did not promise anything good for the next day either. We were told to wait for a call from the airport – if we were lucky, we might be able to fly early next morning.
We had all our things packed, had breakfast and were sitting in the lodge waiting for the call from 6 am the next day. At around 3 pm our guide told us we should go to the airport as there was “20% chance” that we would fly on that day. At the airport, no one was able to tell for sure whether there would be any flights, but they took our luggage and gave us boarding passes, to which our guide commented, “60% chance now!” After checking the luggage in we passed security control and entered the boarding area where the passengers of 3 different flights were all sitting hoping for good weather. At this point our guide said, “90% chance for you now!”
We saw the airport staff take out our backpacks to the area where the planes were parked to start loading them into the plane. “99% chance now,” I thought looking at the fog and trying not to think about how close the now invisible mountains were. A minute later a man entered the hall and told us our flight was cancelled. “Maybe tomorrow,” he said and told us to go and take our bags from the area near the runway. We spent the rest of the day in the lodge drinking tea and mentally returning from the mountains.
The next morning – fog, rain and waiting in uncertainty for the call from the airport. We walked to the airport again, checked in the luggage, passed security control. I remember looking out of the window and secretly hoping for the flight to be cancelled. When we landed in Lukla on our first day I was thinking the pilots flying those planes in the mountains were super-human, but no matter how much I admired their mastery, the perspective of flying in what looked like very bad visibility was not exciting at all.
After some more waiting, we boarded the plane and finally flew to Kathmandu. As soon as I got to the hotel in Kathmandu I got a message telling that the same plane which we had just taken to get to Kathmandu, had returned to Lukla thirty minutes later and crashed when landing. Apparently, the visibility was not good and the plane had crashed into the hill right below the runway. Luckily, because it was the end of the mountain season, the plane was flying with cargo and had no passengers, only the crew members were on board. Only the captain died in the crash. As the newspapers were saying later, the weather was still so bad that there were no flights from Lukla for 3 days after the accident so that they could not even fly the injured crew members to Kathmandu for several days...
