Canadian Xpress is celebrating 15 years of operations and as part of those celebrations we will be flying some of the routes of our 15-Year Anniversary Tour. Over the next several months, we will pick one leg from the Tour and turn it into the monthly Challenge event. You will still have to fly the leg once for the tour and again for the challenge if you want credit for both.
This month, we fly Leg 31 of the Anniversary Tour and fly from Paro to Lukla. Paro is a town, in the Paro Valley of Bhutan. It is an historic town with many sacred sites and historical buildings scattered throughout the area. It is also home to Paro International Airport, Bhutan’s sole international airport. Paro International Airport is served by Drukair. Paro Airport has been described as “the most difficult commercial airport in the world”. The airport has only one runway, airplanes on approach pass by the 18,000ft Himalayan Mountain peaks, and the 6,500 ft runway length presents a double challenge, due to the low air density. As a result, only a handful of airline pilots (8 as of December 2014) are certified to operate commercial airplanes there. About 30,000 people arrive at the airport each year.
Lukla is a small town in the Khumbu Pasang Lhamu rural municipality of the Solukhumbu District in northeastern Nepal. Situated at 9,383 ft above sea level, it is a popular place for visitors to the Himalayas near Mount Everest to arrive. Although Lukla means “place with many goats and sheep”, few are found in the area nowadays. Lukla village holds a small airport serving the region, and a variety of shops and lodges catering to tourists and trekkers, providing western-style meals and trail supplies. From Lukla, travelers need two days to reach the village of Namche Bazaar, an altitude-acclimatization stop for those continuing on. The airport has a 1,729 ft single asphalt runway, making it the shortest commercial runway in the world.
Your mission is to depart from Paro International (VQPR) and fly to Tenzing-Hillary (VNLK) with any Canadian Xpress freeware or payware aircraft that is rated for both airports.
Join Canadian Xpress today in order to participate as there are some great prizes to be won including any Aerosoft download product from https://www.aerosoft.com/
The January 2025 Monthly Challenge is open to all Canadian Xpress pilots from January 1st until January 29th, 2025 so join Canadian Xpress today by visiting https://canadianxpress.ca.