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Photos provided by Karan BhattaIt was during the height of the China-Tibet tensions that the Dalai Lama fled the persecution of the Chinese. However, not all Tibetans found solace in India as Dalai Lama did. Some Tibetans had fled to Nepal, and a subset of the population had found their way to the Khumbu region, which houses the Lukla Airport. This airport has been dubbed the most dangerous, though the people in the aviation community of Nepal think of this labeling as rather misguided. In order to help the Tibetan refugees in the Khumbu region, Sir Edmund Hillary constructed an airport at an altitude of 15,000 ft. Had it survived the test of time, it would have been the highest airport in the world, alongside being the most dangerous.
The Mingbo Airstrip was constructed by the Silver Hut wintering group. This group stayed in the Everest region, especially during the winters, to "study the long-term effect of really high altitude on human lowland subjects." One of the subsections of the study was to analyze how acclimatization affects the chemical control of breathing. Dawa Tsering Sherpa, a resident of the Khumjung village (in the Khumbu region), is one of the subjects of research similar to the one carried out by the Silver Hut group. "Every year, youngsters like I are taken to some high altitudes like Pheriche and asked to perform different forms of exercise," he told GlobalAir.com. "Then, our breaths, how we acclimatize, etc., are studied using some scientific instruments." When asked how the research equipment is taken to such high altitudes, he said that these were flown to Lukla and then carried by either mules or porters to villages like Pheriche.
In his book "The View from the Summit," Sir Edmund Hillary writes about how the Silver Hut group was involved in the construction of the airport:
"…Silver Hut wintering group put a team of men on to leveling the site at 15,000 feet, chopping off the frozen clumps of snow grass, filling in the worst of the holes, and rolling away the large boulders. ... When the strip had been cleared to 400 yards, the first landing was made. Work on the strip continued for some months and we finally enlarged it to 500 yards and generally improved it."
The aircraft that landed on the Mingbo airstrip was a Pilatus Porter PC-6 piloted by Captain Schrieber, who wanted to drop relief materials for Tibetan refugees given by the International Red Cross. It was Captain Schreiber who agreed to drop aluminum materials (along with the relief supplies) for the construction of a school Hillary envisioned building in Khumjung. The aluminum building still stands in the school. Mahendra Kathet, a teacher who served in Khumjung School for around four decades, recalled his experiences with the Mingbo Airport to GlobalAir.com: "Mingbo didn't operate for long. One of the flights to Mingbo brought in materials for the construction of an aluminum building that stands in the school. The materials were given by a company in India. After landing in Mingbo, building materials were carried to Khumjung by porters and the construction of the school started.""
The aluminum building of the Khumjung Secondary School now serves as the Sir Edmund Hillary Visitor Center.
According to Hillary's accounts, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal hadn't known about the air operations in Mingbo for months. After the government of Nepal caught wind of flights to and from Mingbo, government officials flew to this airport at the base of Mount Ama Dablam to judge whether it was worthy of regular flight operations. But the flight was plagued with turbulence as fierce wind blew sideways. Hillary wrote about the experience of this flight:
"Captain Schrieber's reaction was immediate - he just dropped the aircraft from thirty feet to land with a huge thud and then rolled upwards close to the rocks on the left-hand side where we stopped safely at the top. We were all severely shaken. The Civil Aviation gentleman staggered out of the aircraft and vomited noisily."
After such a treacherous landing, the personnel from the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) demanded that the Mingbo airstrip be shut down immediately. However, there was a slight problem. The Lukla airstrip hadn't been constructed then, and it would have taken 17 days for them to get back to Kathmandu. When learning about this, the inspectors from CAAN allowed one last flight to take off from Mingbo, which would transport them to their office in Kathmandu.
Trekkers and mountaineers set up tents in the Mingbo airstrip.
After the failure of the Mingbo airstrip, Hillary was approached by a group of locals about building an airport in Lukla. When representatives of CAAN landed in Lukla for a test flight, Hillary always had Mingbo's memories in the back of his mind. Luckily, the test flight in Lukla wasn't as turbulent as the one experienced in Mingbo, and the authorities of CAAN approved Lukla Airport to be operable.