The Logistics of Getting There
I just purchased my airline tickets for the trip to Everest. I booked my flight with Emirates Airlines, but the 3 leg flight actually has me flying JetBlue from New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale, Emirates from Fort Lauderdale to Dubai, and FlyDubai from Dubai to Kathmandu. For a flight distance of 10,361 miles, I was actually able to get a pretty reasonable round-trip ticket at around $1,700. For a perspective on distance of this flight, the earth’s circumference is 24,901 miles by comparison.
Kathmandu is 11 hr 45 min ahead of us here in the central time zone, so I’ll actually be leaving out of New Orleans on Sunday morning and not arriving in Kathmandu until Tuesday morning.
The most interesting flight will come when we fly from Kathmandu to Lukla a few days later. This airport, named Tenzing-Hillary Airport in 2008 in honor of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary, the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, is located at an elevation of 9,334 ft. and the runway is only 527 m (1,729 ft). For pure entertainment value, if you have about 7 minutes to spare, follow the link below to see a little more about this pretty famous little airport and its surroundings.
Adam