Evacuation reach
Free calculator
If it goes wrong up there, who comes?
A planning tool for before you go: which helicopter bases can reach where you are trekking, how long the flying is, and the least that flying could cost — measured against the evacuation cap on your policy.
Landing sites to check
Aircraft on the platform
Rescue desk
Somebody needs lifting now?
Do not use this page. Nepali rescue is coordinated by voice — call, and keep the phone free.
A helicopter evacuation in Nepal is flown from the nearest operator base to the nearest landing site, in daylight, once a voice call has reached a coordinator. The flying is usually well under an hour each way; the wait is almost never the flying. What the flying costs depends on the aircraft and the distance, and it is only ever the floor of what an evacuation is billed at.
Choose the landing site nearest to where you will be, and the bases within reach of it will be listed with the flying time and the floor cost.
Before you go
Two clauses worth reading in your policy
Neither of them is the headline number on the certificate, and both of them are what decides whether an evacuation is covered.
- The altitude limit
- Many standard travel policies stop covering trekking above 4,000 m, which is below Everest Base Camp and below half the landing sites in this tool. It is usually a separate clause from the evacuation benefit and it voids it entirely. How that exclusion works.
- The evacuation cap
- A cap is a number, and the number to compare it against is not the flying figure on this page — it is that figure plus the crew, the extraction, the minimum and the handling. What an evacuation is actually billed at.
Asked before a trek
Reach, timing and cover
- How long does a helicopter rescue take in Nepal?
- The flying is usually well under an hour each way from the nearest base — Kathmandu to the Khumbu is around forty minutes in the air. The wait is almost never the flying. An evacuation is coordinated by voice, needs daylight, and launches only when the valley is open, so a casualty at altitude on a closed afternoon waits for the next morning rather than for an aircraft.
- Can a helicopter fly a rescue in Nepal at night?
- Assume not. Mountain evacuation in Nepal is flown in daylight and in visual conditions, so an incident in the late afternoon is frequently a first-light departure the following day. That is the single biggest reason to carry the means to keep somebody warm and stable overnight above the road head.
- Is the cost shown here what an evacuation will be billed at?
- No. It is a floor: the flying alone, out and back, at the operator's own published hourly rate. A real invoice adds the medical crew, any longline extraction, the operator's daily minimum, hospital handling and any repositioning. Treat the figure as the least the flying could cost, and read the rescue cost guide for how the billing actually works.
- Does travel insurance cover a helicopter evacuation in Nepal?
- Often less than people assume. Many standard policies exclude trekking above 4,000 m — which is below Everest Base Camp — or cap helicopter evacuation well below what one costs. Check the altitude limit and the evacuation cap as two separate clauses, and compare the cap against the flying figure on this page before you decide it is enough.
- Do I need to arrange payment before a helicopter will come?
- No. Operators fly on the medical need and bill afterwards; nobody is asked to arrange money before an aircraft launches. What follows is a claim rather than a purchase, which is why the policy wording matters more than the balance in your account.
The thin air that makes an evacuation urgent also limits what an aircraft can lift — what the air is doing up there and what can be lifted from it are the two facts behind everything on this page.
Planning a trek and want this checked properly?
The rescue desk knows which operators keep crews on call for which regions and what they will and will not fly into. It is staffed around the clock, and a question asked in September costs nothing.