Manthali (Ramechhap) Airport: Where Your Lukla Flight Leaves From in Peak Season

If you have booked the Everest Base Camp trek in spring or autumn, you will probably start it in a town most people have never heard of. Manthali, in Ramechhap district, is where many of our trekkers actually board the plane to Lukla, and it is a four to five hour drive from Kathmandu, not a short hop from the city airport. I would rather you read about it here, calmly, than meet it for the first time at one in the morning in the lobby of your hotel. This is what I know about the place, what I do not know, and what we do about it.

Where is Manthali, and what is Ramechhap Airport?

Manthali is a municipality and the district headquarters of Ramechhap District in Bagmati Province, on the bank of the Tamakoshi River. According to Wikipedia it was formed on 2 December 2014 by merging several village development committees, and it was declared the district headquarters in March 1989. Ramechhap Airport, the airstrip people mean when they say Manthali, is the district's only airport. The Government of Nepal owns it and the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) operates it. Its codes are RHP and VNRC.

Wikipedia also gives some figures I can pass on with their name attached: an elevation of 474 metres (1,555 feet), a single concrete runway of 530 metres by 20 metres, and an opening date in October 1979. Our own guide to Lukla flight safety puts Manthali at about 474 metres too, so the two agree. Lukla is at 2,860 metres.

By our guides' reckoning Manthali is about 130 kilometres from Kathmandu by road, and I will be honest that published distances vary. We use four to five hours for the drive, and that is our guides' figure, not an official timetable. On the way back it can stretch to six.

Why do the Lukla flights leave from Manthali?

Kathmandu has one runway, and in the busy months it has to fit international jets, domestic services and a queue of small aircraft that all want to be airborne in the same early-morning window. Moving the mountain flights out of the capital eases that. In September 2022 the Kathmandu newspaper Republica reported that CAAN had decided to run the Lukla flights from Manthali, with private airlines preparing to start from 25 September, and gave the reason as infrastructure expansion and facility upgrades at Manthali for a route used largely by foreign travellers. No end date was announced.

It has been tried before. According to Wikipedia, Manthali closed for 13 months in 2015 for runway renovation and reopened in August 2016. In 2019, while the runway at Kathmandu was being renovated, all the Lukla flights ran from Ramechhap, at a peak of 24 flights a day by the sources Wikipedia cites. By 2020 flights were back in Kathmandu, and since the 2022 decision they have returned to Manthali in the busy seasons.

When do the flights use Manthali?

Our working dates are roughly 15 March to 15 May and 25 September to 30 November, which is what we give in our Ramechhap versus Lukla guide and our domestic flights guide. The dates are set by CAAN, not by us. I could not find a published notice for 2026, so treat these as our working figures. Outside those windows, some flights still leave from Kathmandu, but I would never tell you to count on it when you are booking months ahead. In 2025 the Ekantipur newspaper reported on 30 September that the Ramechhap to Lukla flights had started for the autumn season, with companies bringing tourists by road to Manthali and flying from there.

What does a Manthali morning look like?

This comes from our own Everest Base Camp itinerary and package pages.

Step	What happens	Source
Midnight to 2 am	Your guide collects you from your Kathmandu hotel. Our itinerary says between midnight and one in the morning, and our package pages say about 12:30 am. Some of our guides' notes say 1 to 2 am. You get the exact time on your itinerary.	Our 12-day EBC itinerary, package pages, Ramechhap guide
The drive	Four to five hours east, in the dark. Our itinerary says you doze against the window.	Our guides' figure
Early morning, Manthali	Check in, weigh bags, wait for your flight to be called. The closing time for check-in differs by airport and is printed on your itinerary.	Our domestic flights guide
The flight	About 20 minutes to Lukla, against about 40 minutes from Kathmandu.	Our package pages
Lukla	Then a walk of around three hours to Phakding, per our itinerary.	Our 12-day EBC itinerary, Day 1

That first day is long, and I will not pretend otherwise. Our own itinerary says it sounds brutal and at two in the morning it feels brutal, and that trekkers say the lost sleep is forgotten when the Himalayas appear through the cabin window.

What is it like at the airport?

Small. Our Ramechhap guide describes a waiting area, a small shop and toilets, and no restaurant, lounge or Wi-Fi. That is from our guides' own visits, not an official list, so bring your own water and a snack. In our domestic flights guide I make the same point: the terminals are not heated, the early departures are cold, and during a delay you will be glad of water and a snack.

What should I carry in my hand luggage?

• Passport and a printout of your ticket. Keep the boarding pass, because it is checked again at smaller airports.
• Any medication, in the pack, not the duffel.
• A warm layer. The cabins are not heated, and our Lukla flight guide says it is much colder at Lukla than at Manthali.
• Water and a snack for the wait.
• Your camera. Drone and camera batteries count towards your hand luggage allowance.
• Cash for the first tea stop and tips, and your phone.

What are the bag rules?

On the mountain flights the allowance is about 10 kilograms checked plus 5 kilograms hand luggage, and one airline treats the two as a single 15 kilogram total. Every airline sets its own limit and your ticket is the final word, as we say in our domestic flights guide. If you are over the limit at the airport you can pay the excess, or leave the extra weight with our driver, who takes it back to Kathmandu. If the aircraft is at its weight limit your extra bag may go on a later flight, so pack as if your duffel might arrive a day behind you. On our Standard treks a porter carries 20 kilograms shared between two trekkers, which is another reason to pack to about 10 kilograms. Most Thamel hotels store the rest while you are on the trail. For the longer packing conversation, read how much luggage you can bring.

Which of our treks use Manthali?

Trek	What our page says about Manthali	Source
Everest Base Camp, 12 days	Budget and Standard fly from Manthali in the peak months. If the flight is rescheduled, ground transport to Manthali and back is included. Luxury flies a helicopter from Kathmandu to Lukla and back, with no Manthali.	Package page and itinerary
Everest Base Camp with return by helicopter, 10 days	The return from Lukla is by helicopter in every tier. Budget and Standard fly or drive in via Manthali, Luxury goes by helicopter.	Package page
Jiri to Everest Base Camp	Budget and Standard fly back from Lukla to Kathmandu or Manthali. Luxury returns by helicopter.	Package page
Gokyo and Cho La, Gokyo Valley, Two Passes	The same peak-season wording on the package pages: pick-up at about 12:30 am for the drive to Manthali. I have not checked every day-by-day itinerary, so ask me.	Package pages
Everest Base Camp by road	No flight and no Manthali. A road trek.	Package page

What happens if flights are cancelled or delayed?

Flights stop when the weather says so. In our Lukla flight guide I wrote that one cancelled day in the peak season can leave a backlog of several hundred trekkers, and that trekkers waiting to fly in are stuck at Manthali while those waiting to fly out are stuck at Lukla. Our autumn trekking pages say a weather delay can leave a backlog of two to three days. A real example: in late March 2024, The Himalayan Times reported that Lukla had been shut for a week by bad weather, with aircraft grounded at Manthali, and some foreign tourists took helicopters to Surke or travelled by road to Phaplu. CAAN's Prajwal Guragain said flights would run through the day on a rotational basis, contingent upon weather. On 25 September 2026, the Kathmandu Post reported, poor visibility closed five airports including Lukla.

Our delay rule is the one in our domestic flights guide. Extra nights and any helicopter are paid by the client. We can move the value of the fixed-wing ticket towards a helicopter seat, less the airline cancellation charge, bank charges and tax, because those are lost once a ticket is cancelled. As a guide, a shared helicopter seat from Kathmandu to Lukla is about USD 640 per person, and from Lukla to Kathmandu about USD 710, including tax, bank charges and the fuel supplement. Shared seats depend on availability and weather. The simplest protection is time: never book an international flight on the day you return from Lukla. Leave at least 24 hours, and 48 if you can.

What if the road to Manthali is closed?

This has happened. In late September 2024, Fiscal Nepal reported landslides at 68 locations, six critical sections of the BP Highway impassable and the airport at Manthali flooded. CAAN moved the Lukla flights back to Kathmandu, and a Tribhuvan Airport spokesperson warned that delays and overcrowding were likely. On 2 October 2024 Tourism Info Nepal reported that with the road to Manthali blocked, flights had temporarily moved to Janakpur. I give you these two facts not to frighten you but because they show how the system behaves: it moves, and your plan needs room for that. Our Ramechhap guide adds that if there is a problem we can drive further towards Phaplu and walk in, or arrange a helicopter at extra cost.

What is the road like right now?

As of 4 October 2026, this is what I can verify and what I cannot.

Date	Report	Source
25 September 2026	Poor visibility closes five airports including Lukla.	Kathmandu Post
Late September 2026	Floods on the Roshi river block eight locations between Bhakundebesi in Kavre and Sindhuli for five days on the BP Highway.	Kathmandu Post, 29 September
29 September 2026	The BP Highway reopens at about 10 am, with traffic using the permanent track under construction.	Kathmandu Post, 29 September
1 October 2026	Traffic runs both ways on the BP Highway, and vehicles are described as moving smoothly. At Chaukidanda, vehicles use a track beside the permanent road.	Kathmandu Post, 1 October

Neither Kathmandu Post article mentions Manthali itself, so I cannot tell you the state of that last stretch. I also saw a commercial post saying only small vehicles were allowed and that night travel was restricted on risky sections. I could not confirm it, so I am not repeating it as fact. This is exactly why we check the road ourselves, as I describe below. Dashain, the biggest festival of the year, runs from 11 to 25 October 2026, and roads out of Kathmandu get busy. The government holiday is 17 to 23 October. Our Dashain guide has the details.

What do we do about it?

Four things. We send a guide to your hotel for the pick-up and we give you the exact time. We confirm the road is open 48 hours before you set off, and if it is still cut we find you an alternative. On Budget and Standard, ground transport to Manthali is part of the package, and on our Everest Base Camp page the transport is included again if the flight is rescheduled. And on Luxury, the helicopter flies direct from Kathmandu to Lukla, which is not affected by the Manthali move, so there is no road leg at all.

I will say plainly what we do not do. We do not promise a flight on a particular day, because nobody can. We do not quote a delay rate, because I have not found a number I trust.

Is there anything to do in Manthali?

Not much, as far as I can say with a source. Wikipedia describes a district headquarters on the Tamakoshi River with a primary health centre and a couple of hospitals and clinics, and black-topped roads that landslides damage. Our Ramechhap guide mentions an overnight stay in Manthali town at about USD 10 to 15 a night. I have not verified that price independently, so ask me before you rely on it. If you want a night in Manthali instead of a midnight drive, tell me and I will tell you what I know that day.

From our guides

• Sleep before you leave the hotel, even if it means dinner at six. The midnight start is the hardest part of the first day.
• Pack the daypack first, with the passport and medication on top.
• Do not book a tight flight home. A spare day at the end of the trek is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
• Check your ticket on the morning. This season every Ramechhap departure on our tickets moved 30 minutes later without anyone telling us, and we only caught it by comparing files.

Frequently asked questions

Can I avoid Manthali? Yes. The helicopter on our Luxury tier flies from Kathmandu. Our road trek uses no flight at all. Outside the peak windows some flights still leave from Kathmandu.

Do I save money flying from Manthali? The fare is lower, and our domestic flights guide has the current list. I have kept fares out of this page because they change. The saving costs a night's sleep, as the Ramechhap guide says.

What happens to my bag if the plane is full? It may go on a later flight. Keep valuables and medication in your daypack.

The short version

Manthali is the airport in Ramechhap district where most Lukla flights leave from in the busy seasons, roughly 15 March to 15 May and 25 September to 30 November by our working dates, about four to five hours by road from Kathmandu. Expect a pick-up between midnight and 2 am, a 20-minute flight, and a day with a spare buffer at the end of the trek. The BP Highway reopened on 29 September 2026 after five days, and I cannot verify the last stretch to Manthali. Luxury goes by helicopter instead. If you want to talk it through for your dates, message me on WhatsApp on +977 9810351300. For the whole route, read our Everest Base Camp itinerary, day by day, our honest answer on whether the Lukla flight is safe, and our Everest Base Camp trek.

Written by Shreejan Simkhada, CEO of The Everest Holiday and third-generation family guide. TAAN Member #1586.