Distance and flight time
Free calculator
How far is it, and how long does it take?
Pick any two landing sites in Nepal. The distance is computed from their surveyed positions, and the time in the air from the published cruise speed of every helicopter that can currently be booked.
Landing sites to pick from
Legs operators quote on
Longest leg on the platform
Units per distance
A helicopter leg in Nepal is measured two ways and they disagree: the straight line between two surveyed points, and the valley the aircraft actually flies. This tool gives you the first one honestly — in kilometres, nautical miles and statute miles — along with the time in the air at real cruise speeds, the climb between the two landing sites, and whether the round trip is inside any aircraft’s published range.
Legs we fly
The journeys operators quote on
Every one of these is a route with certified operators bidding on it, shortest first. The distance and the climb are computed from the two landing sites; the flight itself is on the route page.
- Pokhara to Annapurna Base Camp38 km · 21 nm · +10,838 ft
- Kathmandu to Gosaikunda43 km · 23 nm · +9,980 ft
- Kathmandu to Kyanjin Gompa61 km · 33 nm · +8,307 ft
- Pokhara to Muktinath69 km · 37 nm · +9,460 ft
- Pokhara to Lo Manthang109 km · 59 nm · +9,788 ft
- Biratnagar to Pathibhara Temple127 km · 69 nm · +12,208 ft
- Lukla to Kathmandu135 km · 73 nm · −4,944 ft
- Kathmandu to Kala Patthar148 km · 80 nm · +13,802 ft
- Kathmandu to Everest Base Camp151 km · 81 nm · +13,208 ft
What the numbers mean
Where each figure comes from
Two of these are measurements and two are estimates, and the difference matters if you are planning a connection.
- How is the distance between two landing sites calculated?
- It is the great-circle distance — the shortest line over the surface of the earth — computed from the surveyed latitude and longitude of each landing site. It is not a road distance and it is not the track a helicopter flies: in the Khumbu and the Kali Gandaki an aircraft follows the valley, so the flown distance is longer than the straight line by a margin that depends on the weather and the route.
- Is the flight time shown the time a helicopter charter is quoted at?
- No. Time in the air is distance divided by the aircraft's published cruise speed in still air. A quote is against block time, which adds the start-up, the climb, any hold for weather or traffic, and the minutes on the ground at each end. On a Himalayan leg the difference between the two is routinely fifteen minutes or more.
- Why does a helicopter flight time show as a range rather than one number?
- Because the aircraft decides it. Cruise speeds across the fleet flying in Nepal differ by roughly a third, so the same leg takes noticeably longer in the slowest airframe than in the fastest. The range is bounded by the slowest and fastest aircraft that can currently be booked, and the aircraft you are offered depends on your party's weight and the altitude of the landing site.
- Can a helicopter fly to a Himalayan helipad and back without refuelling?
- It depends on the airframe and the leg. Fuel is available at only a handful of Nepali airfields, so on most legs the aircraft carries the round trip with it: the published still-air range has to cover twice the distance before a reserve is even set aside. The count of aircraft that clear that bar is shown on each leg's page.
- Does altitude change how long a helicopter flight takes?
- Altitude costs more in payload than in time. Climbing to a Himalayan helipad adds a few minutes to a leg, but the thinner air cuts what the aircraft can lift by hundreds of kilograms — which is why a five-seat helicopter is a two- or three-seat helicopter at Everest Base Camp. Weight, not time, is what usually decides whether a party flies together.
Weight is the other half of this question, and at altitude it is usually the half that decides who flies — the payload planner works out how many of your party a given aircraft can lift to a given helipad, and the cost-per-person calculator works out what each of them pays. The climb column on every leg above has a consequence — what the air is doing at the far end — which is the fact behind both of the others. And the season calendar says which months the leg is flown in at all.
Want the block time for a real date?
Leave a number. A dispatcher rings back with the actual timings for your leg, your party and your dates — including the ground time this calculator deliberately leaves out.