---
title: "The AS350 B3 over Everest, and what it does the rest of the year"
description: "Airbus gives the AS350 B3 a hover ceiling of 3,840 m at full weight. Nepal's fleet flew 50,000 hours on the type anyway. What each figure is quoted at."
source: "https://gohelinepal.com/blogs/the-airbus-as350-b3-nepals-himalayan-workhorse"
markdown: "https://gohelinepal.com/md/blogs/the-airbus-as350-b3-nepals-himalayan-workhorse"
site: "Go Heli Nepal"
updated: "2026-09-30"
author: "Go Heli Nepal"
---

# The AS350 B3 over Everest, and what it does the rest of the year

_Industry · 8 min read · published 2026-09-30_

Airbus gives the AS350 B3 a hover ceiling of 3,840 m at full weight. Nepal's fleet flew 50,000 hours on the type anyway. What each figure is quoted at.

The Airbus AS350 B3 is the single-engine helicopter that does most of the high-altitude flying in Nepal. It is also the type that reached the summit of Mount Everest, in May 2005. Airbus publishes a maximum flight altitude of 7,010 m for the type, which it now sells as the H125.

That flying runs out of Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International, at 1,338 m, and through Tenzing–Hillary Airport at Lukla, at 2,845 m, the nearest aerodrome to Everest in Nepal's Khumbu. Almost everything written about this aircraft and that mountain is about the one flight in 2005. This page is about the other days: what the type is certified at, what each published figure is quoted against, and what Nepal's own fleet has actually done on it.

## What does the AS350 B3 do for a living in Nepal's Khumbu?

Sightseeing, pilgrim charter, slung cargo and medical evacuation, most of it between Kathmandu and the Khumbu.

Go Heli Nepal publishes five seats, a ceiling of 23,000 ft and a cruise of 120 knots for the type. Published fleet listings put AS350 B3 and B3e aircraft with Manang Air, Altitude Air, Fishtail Air, Simrik Air and Shree Airlines, among others. The wider list of [helicopters used in nepal](https://gohelinepal.com/blogs/the-helicopters-that-fly-in-nepal) sets out which other types share that work and what each of them is for.

None of that is record flying. It is a scheduled bus service over the worst terrain a light single is sold into, and the aircraft on the pad in front of you has almost certainly spent the morning doing it.

## What figures does Airbus publish for the AS350 B3, and what is each one quoted against?

Four numbers, each measured or certified against a different condition, and the conditions are the part that gets dropped.

Airbus gives the H125 a maximum flight altitude of 7,010 m and a hover ceiling out of ground effect of 3,840 m at maximum take-off weight, on its technical information page for the type. The EASA type certificate data sheet covering the AS350 and EC130 families gives the B3 a maximum take-off weight of 2,250 kg, or 4,960 lb. Published type specifications rate its Turbomeca Arriel 2B at 847 shaft horsepower.

Published specification sheets also give the type a hover ceiling in ground effect of 4,420 m — 14,500 ft — at that same maximum weight. Read the two hover figures together: 580 m of altitude is bought by nothing but having a surface under the rotor disc.

Which means two landing sites at one elevation are not one job. A broad flat pad lets the aircraft settle with the cushion of its own downwash helping; a sloping, confined or deeply snow-covered site where it has to come down vertically and clear of that cushion does not. The question is not only how high the site is but what shape it is.

And every figure above is quoted against the International Standard Atmosphere, the ICAO model each performance chart is drawn to. A Himalayan morning is colder than the model and a hot afternoon over a valley floor is warmer, so the published figure is the outer edge of the aircraft rather than a forecast of the day you fly.

**The published AS350 B3 figures, and the condition each is quoted against**

| Figure | Published value | Quoted against |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Maximum flight altitude | 7,010 m (23,000 ft) | A certified limit on flight |
| Hover ceiling, out of ground effect | 3,840 m | Maximum take-off weight, standard air |
| Hover ceiling, in ground effect | 4,420 m (14,500 ft) | The same weight, close to a surface |
| Maximum take-off weight | 2,250 kg (4,960 lb) | EASA type certificate data sheet |
| Engine take-off rating | 847 shp, Turbomeca Arriel 2B | Published type specifications |

_Altitude and hover figures as Airbus publishes them for the H125; the weight as the EASA type certificate data sheet for the AS350 and EC130 families gives it. All of them assume the International Standard Atmosphere._

## How much flying has the AS350 actually done in the Himalaya?

Fifty thousand hours by April 2017, on a Nepali fleet of fifteen aircraft.

Helis.com and HeliHub.com both reported Airbus and its Nepali customers marking that total, across seven operators, and both give the same fleet more than 15,000 flying hours a year. The first H125 was delivered to Nepal in 2012.

Those numbers are worth dividing. Fifty thousand hours across fifteen airframes is an average of more than 3,300 hours on each. Fifteen thousand hours a year across fifteen aircraft is about 1,000 hours per airframe per year — close to three hours in the air every day of the year, each, in the hardest conditions the type is sold into.

Airbus's own account of the milestone says the mission profile in Nepal requires the aircraft to be flown above 20,000 ft, in air 30 degrees Celsius hotter than the standard atmosphere, on a regular basis. That is one source rather than two: it is Airbus describing its own aircraft, carried by both outlets.

This is the figure the word workhorse is usually standing in for, and it is the one no page on this subject prints. A service ceiling describes what a machine can do once. A utilisation figure describes what a fleet of them did, in Nepal, for five years.

It is also eight years old. Nepal's fleet has grown since, and no later total appears to have been published, so treat 50,000 as a floor under a number nobody has updated rather than as the current one.

## How was a climber lifted from 7,800 m if the type hovers at 3,840 m?

Because the hover ceiling is a statement about weight, not a lid on the airframe.

The 3,840 m figure is quoted at maximum take-off weight. Take weight out — seats, cargo, all but minimum fuel — and the figure rises, which is why the type's altitude record and its passenger work look nothing like each other.

The Himalayan evidence for that sits on two flights, three years apart, both on ordinary Nepali commercial airframes. On 29 April 2010 a Fishtail Air AS350 B3, flown by Air Zermatt's Daniel Aufdenblatten, lifted stranded climbers from about 6,900 m on Annapurna on a longline; Vertical Magazine and HeliHub.com both reported it as the highest of its kind at the time. On 21 May 2013 Maurizio Folini lifted an injured climber from about 7,800 m on Everest beneath an AS350 B3, which Vertical Magazine reported as the highest made on that mountain.

Set 7,800 m against 3,840 m. The same type worked more than 3,900 m above its own published hover ceiling, because the weight it was quoted at was not aboard.

The part the record pages leave out is whose aircraft these were. Both were airframes from Nepal's working fleet rather than manufacturer test machines, flown by Swiss and Italian pilots under a training and logistics arrangement with Nepali operators. The expertise was imported; the helicopters were the ones that fly tourists on a normal Tuesday.

The extreme version of the same arithmetic is the 2005 summit flight, and its figures and their provenance are set out under [didier delsalle helicopter everest](https://gohelinepal.com/blogs/didier-delsalle-and-the-highest-helicopter-landing-ever-made). None of these flights is something a passenger can buy. A stripped airframe carrying one pilot and minimum fuel is not the aircraft a seat is sold in, and the gap between the two is the whole reason the published figures are quoted at a weight.

## Does it matter which AS350 B3 an operator means?

Yes, because the engine changed under a name that did not.

The B3 carries Turbomeca's Arriel 2B at 847 shaft horsepower. The later B3e carries the Arriel 2D, certified at 950. New-build machines are delivered as H125, which is the same aircraft renamed in 2015 rather than a different one. The B2 below them carries an earlier engine again, and the H130 is certificated as an AS350 B4 without being a later AS350 at all — that ladder belongs to the type-by-type page linked above.

Power is exactly what thin air takes away, so the variant letter shows up at the top of a climb and hardly at all in a valley. That is inference from the engine ratings rather than a published operating rule: no operator publishes an elevation at which it swaps one variant for another.

## What should you ask about the aircraft before a high landing in Nepal?

The type, the variant, and the registration — in that order, and the third is the only one that is unique.

The type and the variant are what decide the elevation the machine can work at. The mark painted on the tail boom is the one identifier attached to the airframe rather than to the company selling the seat, and [aircraft registrations you will see on a nepal helipad](https://gohelinepal.com/blogs/aircraft-registrations-you-will-see-on-a-nepal-helipad) is how to read it.

Expect the answer to change. Fleets move between operators, an airframe goes in for maintenance, a rescue takes priority, and weather strands a machine up-country overnight. Nothing about that is irregular, and no operator can promise a departure slot out of Lukla when the valley is closed.

What is worth knowing is which type you ended up with, and at what elevation it is expected to put you down.

## Questions

### What is the Airbus AS350 B3?

The Airbus AS350 B3 is a single-engine light helicopter, powered by a Turbomeca Arriel 2B rated at 847 shaft horsepower, and it does most of the high-altitude flying in Nepal. Airbus publishes a maximum flight altitude of 7,010 m for the type and now sells it as the H125. Published type histories give its first flight in March 1997 and its certification in December 1997.

### What is the hover ceiling of an AS350 B3 at maximum weight?

Airbus gives the type a hover ceiling out of ground effect of 3,840 m at maximum take-off weight, on its technical information page for the H125. Published specification sheets give 4,420 m, or 14,500 ft, in ground effect at the same weight. Both figures are quoted against the International Standard Atmosphere and both rise as weight comes out of the aircraft. The EASA type certificate data sheet for the AS350 and EC130 families gives the B3 a maximum take-off weight of 2,250 kg.

### How many flying hours has the AS350 fleet accumulated in Nepal?

Airbus and its Nepali customers marked 50,000 flight hours on the type in April 2017, on a fleet of 15 aircraft across seven operators, as Helis.com and HeliHub.com both reported. The same reports give that fleet more than 15,000 hours a year, which is an average of about 1,000 hours on each airframe annually. The first H125 was delivered to Nepal in 2012. No later total has been published.

### Has an AS350 B3 flown higher in Nepal than its published hover ceiling?

Yes, by a wide margin, because the hover ceiling is quoted at maximum take-off weight rather than fixed by the airframe. Vertical Magazine reported a longline extraction at about 7,800 m on Mount Everest on 21 May 2013, flown by Maurizio Folini beneath an AS350 B3, against a published hover ceiling out of ground effect of 3,840 m at full weight. A Fishtail Air AS350 B3 made an earlier longline rescue from about 6,900 m on Annapurna on 29 April 2010. Both aircraft were light, and neither flight resembles a passenger charter.

### In what conditions is the AS350 B3 flown in Nepal?

Airbus's own account of the type's 50,000-hour milestone in Nepal says the mission profile requires the aircraft to be flown above 20,000 ft, in air 30 degrees Celsius hotter than the International Standard Atmosphere, on a regular basis. The flying runs out of Kathmandu's Tribhuvan International at 1,338 m and through Tenzing–Hillary Airport at Lukla, at 2,845 m, the nearest aerodrome to Mount Everest. Everest Base Camp stands at 5,364 m and Kala Patthar at 5,545 m, both above the type's published hover ceiling at full weight.