What can actually lift your group?
A five-seat helicopter often carries only two at a time to Kala Patthar, the Everest landing. Enter your party's real weights and see which aircraft can take them, before anybody quotes you.
- Landing sites
- 18
- Largest party it plans
- 30
- Starting weight, edit it
- 80 kg
Your party, against the altitude.
Why altitude decides who flies.
The aircraft and its fuel come out of a helicopter's lift before a passenger does, and at 5,500 m there is far less lift to start with.
Lift falls with height
Thinner air gives the rotor less to work with, so the most the aircraft may weigh falls as the landing site gets higher. The higher end of the leg governs.
Aircraft and fuel first
The empty aircraft and the fuel to get back, plus twenty minutes of reserve, come out of that allowance first. What remains is for passengers and bags.
An estimate, not a load sheet
Published performance figures, read as a straight line across a curved chart in standard conditions. The pilot’s load sheet on the day is the only figure that dispatches a flight.
The reason the aircraft lifts so little up there is the air itself: about half a sea-level breath at Kala Patthar.
Weight and altitude, answered.
Why can a five-seat helicopter only take two people to Kala Patthar?
Air gets thinner with altitude, so a helicopter's rotor produces less lift. At Kala Patthar, above 18,000 ft, an AS350 is limited to a gross weight several hundred kilograms below its sea-level maximum, and the empty aircraft and its fuel come out of that first. What is left for passengers is usually two or three people, whatever the cabin seats.
Does the departure point matter, or only the landing site?
Whichever end is higher governs the answer. A flight down from Syangboche to Lukla is planned against Syangboche, because that is where the aircraft has to hover in the thinnest air.
Is fuel counted as payload?
No, and forgetting it is how a plan produces a number nobody can fly. This planner reserves the fuel needed to get back plus twenty minutes of reserve, and only what remains is available for passengers and bags.
Can I book from these numbers?
No. This is a planning estimate built from published aircraft performance figures, using a straight-line reading of a curved performance chart in standard conditions. The pilot's load sheet on the day, against the actual aircraft and the actual temperature, is the only calculation that dispatches a flight.
The rest of the plan.
Each answers one question before you ask for a price. All free, no account needed.
Flight time and distance
Any two landing sites in Nepal: the straight-line distance, the time in the air, and whether the flight needs a fuel stop.
Altitude and oxygen
How high every landing site is, in feet and metres, and how much of the oxygen at sea level is left in each breath up there.
Cost per person
Seats or the whole helicopter, priced against your headcount at published fares, with the party size where the two swap over.
Season calendar
Month by month, which flights are published as in season and how often that month's mornings are lost to cloud.
Evacuation reach
For before you trek: which helicopter bases can reach where you will be, how long the flying is, and the least it could cost.
Send the weights. We do the comparing.
Tell the desk the flight, the date and each passenger's weight. We ask every licensed operator that can lift your party and book you the cheapest, aiming to reply within four hours.