Tribhuvan International Airport guide

Tribhuvan International Airport opened in 1949 as Gauchar Airport and took its current name and international designation in 1964. Nepal's Civil Aviation Authority operates it on the government's behalf, and it remains the country's busiest international gateway, though Gautam Buddha International Airport and Pokhara International Airport now also handle scheduled international flights. Its single runway, 02/20, is a tabletop strip with a 1.2% slope toward its northern end, and at 1,340 metres above sea level the airport ranks among the highest-elevation hubs handling scheduled wide-body traffic.

The single runway has become a bottleneck as traffic grows: annual passengers rose from 8.7 million in 2023 to 9.5 million in 2024. The Civil Aviation Authority has started building a parallel taxiway and a new international terminal, after which the existing international building is due to be reconfigured for domestic use. Short-hop carriers based here feed Nepal's trekking industry, flying into mountain airstrips such as Lukla, the gateway for Everest expeditions.

The airport sits on Kathmandu's eastern edge, a short drive from the Pashupatinath Temple complex, putting international arrivals within reach of the capital's historic core rather than an outlying business district.