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What can actually lift your group?

A five-seat helicopter is a three-seat helicopter at Everest Base Camp, and a two-seat one higher up. Enter your party's real weights and see which aircraft can take them, before anybody quotes you.

Passengers

One weight per person, in kilograms, as flown — clothing and boots included. Estimates are fine; the closer they are, the closer the answer.

80 kg to lift — 1 passenger and bags.

Choose both ends of the flight and the people flying, and the planner will check every aircraft on the platform against them.

How this works

Why altitude decides who flies

Four things come out of a helicopter's lift before a passenger does, and at 5,500 m there is far less lift to start with.

Why can a five-seat helicopter only take two people to Everest Base Camp?
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 figures each operator has published, 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.