After combination of factors that led to large commercial expeditions and their hired high altitude workers leaving Everest Base Camp last week following the devastating avalanche on 18 April that killed 13 climbers on the Khumbu Icefall, foreign mountaineers are now facing difficulty getting air tickets at Lukla Airport to get back to Kathmandu.
"We have not been able to issue tickets to a lot of tourists due to the limited number of flights and also the bad weather," Phuniru Sherpa, the station manager of Tara Air, Lukla, said. Sherpa said although every airlines operating flights here has added flights in view of the sheer number of climbers who have returned from the Mt Everest base camp, the flights are affected due to the weather.
Simrik Air staff in Lukla said that the lack of sufficient flights back to Kathmandu makes it difficult to deal with foreign climbers who had to give up their climbing bid this season.