Paro International Airport ( dz, སྤ་རོ་གནམ་ཐང༌།, paro gnam thang) is the sole

international airport An international airport is an airport with customs and border control facilities enabling passengers to travel between countries around the world. International airports are usually larger than domestic airports and they must feature longer ...

of the four airports in

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainous ...

. It is from Paro in a deep valley on the bank of the river

Paro Chhu The Paro Chhu is a river of western Bhutan. It is a tributary of the Raidak River, Wong Chhu, which is known as the Raidak in its lower reaches. Course The Paro Chhu rises to the south of Mount Jomolhari, Chomo Lhari (mountain of the Goddess). It ...

. With surrounding peaks as high as , it is considered one of the world's most challenging airports, and only eight pilots are certified to land at the airport. Flights to and from Paro are allowed under

visual meteorological conditions In aviation, visual meteorological conditions (VMC) is an aviation flight category in which visual flight rules (VFR) flight is permitted—that is, conditions in which pilots have sufficient visibility to fly the aircraft maintaining visual sep ...

only and are restricted to daylight hours from sunrise to sunset. Paro airport was the only airport in Bhutan until 2011. Paro Airport is accessible by road, from Paro city, and from

Thimphu Thimphu (; dz, ཐིམ་ཕུག ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of Bhutan. It is situated in the western central part of Bhutan, and the surrounding valley is one of Bhutan's ''dzongkhags'', the Thimphu District. The ancient ...

by Paro-Thimphu road.

History

In 1968, the

Indian Border Roads Organisation The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) is a road construction executive force in India that provides support to and is now a part of the Indian Armed Forces. BRO develops and maintains road networks in India's border areas and friendly neighboring ...

built an

airstrip An aerodrome (Commonwealth English) or airdrome (American English) is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for publ ...

in the Paro

valley A valley is an elongated low area often running between Hill, hills or Mountain, mountains, which will typically contain a river or stream running from one end to the other. Most valleys are formed by erosion of the land surface by rivers ...

, which was initially used for on-call

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

operations by the

Indian Armed Forces The Indian Armed Forces are the military forces of the Republic of India. It consists of three professional uniformed services: the Indian Army, Indian Navy, and Indian Air Force.—— Additionally, the Indian Armed Forces are supported by ...

on behalf of the

Royal Government of Bhutan The Government of Bhutan has been a constitutional monarchy since 18 July 2008. The King of Bhutan is the head of state. The executive power is exercised by the Lhengye Zhungtshog, or council of ministers, headed by the Prime Minister. Legislat ...

. Bhutan's first airline,

Drukair Drukair Corporation Limited ( dz, འབྲུག་མཁའ་འགྲུལ་ལས་འཛིན།), operating as Drukair — Royal Bhutan Airlines, is the flag carrier of the Kingdom of Bhutan, headquartered in the western dzongkha ...

, was established by

Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, bu ...

on 5 April 1981. Paro Airport is deep in a valley

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

and is surrounded by

mountains A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher th ...

as high as . The airport was constructed with a

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

in length, giving the Bhutanese government specific requirements for a choice of aircraft to be operated from Paro. They required an 18–20 seat

STOL A short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft is a conventional fixed-wing aircraft that has short runway requirements for takeoff and landing. Many STOL-designed aircraft also feature various arrangements for use on airstrips with harsh conditio ...

-capable aircraft with operating capabilities which included a high

service ceiling With respect to aircraft performance, a ceiling is the maximum density altitude an aircraft can reach under a set of conditions, as determined by its flight envelope. Service ceiling Service ceiling is where the rate of climb drops below a pres ...

, high

rate of climb In aeronautics, the rate of climb (RoC) is an aircraft's vertical speed, that is the positive or negative rate of altitude change with respect to time. In most ICAO member countries, even in otherwise metric countries, this is usually expressed ...

and high manoeuvrability. The major requirement for the aircraft was that it must be capable of flying

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

ParoKolkata, a round-trip, without refuelling, due to minimal

infrastructure Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and priv ...

being available at Paro. Three aircraft types were considered after

flight test Flight testing is a branch of aeronautical engineering that develops specialist equipment required for testing aircraft behaviour and systems. Instrumentation systems are developed using proprietary transducers and data acquisition systems. D ...

s that had been conducted in India and Bhutan between 1978 and 1980; however, none was deemed suitable. In mid-1981, the

Indian government The Government of India (ISO 15919, ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the Government, national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy lo ...

set up a committee to study its own requirements for a light transport aircraft. Based upon this study, the Bhutanese government ordered one Dornier 228-200 for delivery in January 1983, with the option for a second aircraft for delivery in late 1983. The first 18-seat Dornier 228-200 landed at Paro Airport on 14 January 1983. The exact time of landing, the number of passengers on board and even the direction the aircraft was parked on the airport apron were predetermined by the high lama of

Paro Dzong Rinpung Dzong, sometimes referred to as Paro Dzong, is a large dzong - Buddhist monastery and fortress - of the Drukpa Lineage of the Kagyu school in Paro District, Bhutan. It houses the district Monastic Body as well as government administrative ...

inaugurated scheduled revenue flights from Paro on 11 February 1983, with Flight 101 departing Paro for Kolkata and returning the next day as Flight 102. At the time of service commencement, Paro Airport consisted of the runway, a two-room

air traffic control Air traffic control (ATC) is a service provided by ground-based air traffic controllers who direct aircraft on the ground and through a given section of controlled airspace, and can provide advisory services to aircraft in non-controlled airs ...

building (with the ground floor acting as the

check-in Check-in is the process whereby people announce their arrival at an office, hotel, airport, hospital, seaport or event. Office check-in Many offices have a reception or front office area near the entrance to greet or assist visitors arriving to a ...

counter) and a departure lounge on the lawn. Before the establishment of the

Department of Civil Aviation A civil aviation authority (CAA) is a national or supranational statutory authority that oversees the regulation of civil aviation, including the maintenance of an aircraft register. Role Due to the inherent dangers in the use of flight vehicles, ...

in January 1986, Drukair was responsible for the operation and maintenance of the airport's infrastructure. In 1990, the runway at Paro Airport was lengthened from and reinforced for heavier aircraft. A

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

was constructed for the aircraft, which was funded by the Indian government as part of the Paro Airport Development Project. On 21 November 1988, Drukair's first jet, a

BAe 146-100 The British Aerospace 146 (also BAe 146) is a short-haul and regional airliner that was manufactured in the United Kingdom by British Aerospace, later part of BAE Systems. Production ran from 1983 until 2001. Manufacture by Avro International ...

, was delivered to Paro Airport. In 2003, Drukair was seeking a replacement for the BAe 146 and on 19 October 2004 the airline's first

Airbus A319-100 The Airbus A319 is a member of the Airbus A320 family of short- to medium-range, narrow-body, commercial passenger twin-engine jet airliners manufactured by Airbus. The A319 carries 124 to 156 passengers and has a maximum range of . Final asse ...

arrived in Paro.

Buddha Air Buddha Air Pvt. Ltd ( ne, बुद्ध एयर) is an airline based in Jawalakhel, Lalitpur, Nepal, near Patan. It operates domestic as well as international services within Nepal and India, serving mainly large towns and cities in Nep ...

became the first international airline to operate charters to Paro in August 2010. Tashi Air, Bhutan's first private airline, was started in December 2011. In 2012, it was reported that 181,659 passengers used the airport. By 2018, this number had grown to 397,599 and 6,761 flights were handled by the airport. The airport got 4 new structures: modified departure terminal building, cargo building, the relocated substation, and a parallel taxiway.

Facilities

The airport has a single

asphalt Asphalt, also known as bitumen (, ), is a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum. It may be found in natural deposits or may be a refined product, and is classed as a pitch. Before the 20th century, the term a ...

, and there is one

terminal Terminal may refer to: Computing Hardware * Terminal (electronics), a device for joining electrical circuits together * Terminal (telecommunication), a device communicating over a line * Computer terminal, a set of primary input and output dev ...

building that was commissioned in 1999. In 2021, the interior was revamped, adding many art pieces.

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

BBC World feature on landing at Paro Airport
* {{Authority control Airports in Bhutan Paro District

History

Facilities

Airlines and destinations

See also

References

External links