You miss your flight to Kathmandu and need to book yourself on another flight. Or you decide to return home early because of a family emergency. These are couple scenarios our trekkers experienced this past season.
What clients learned is that: 1) It is best to book directly with an airline vs booking on a web portal or a travel booking website such as expedia, orbitz etc and 2) Cheap airlines do have bad customer service. When booking through an online booking system, trekkers who missed their flight had a hard time rebooking their flight to Kathmandu. The customer service representative at Expedia then asked them to contact China Southern, which is one of the cheapest airline to fly to Kathmandu from the US, but their customer service representative barely spoke English and was not helpful at all.
Another important issue to know before hand is that if you are flying to Kathmandu through India or China and your airline connection requires you to be in these countries for 12 or more hours (check with the airline for exact time you are allowed without a visa), you would need a visa. And for most including Americans, Indian and Chinese visas are not available on arrival but need to be procured prior to departure from their home country.
If for any reason, you decide to fly back home early and if this happens to be in the middle of the busy season in October/November or March/April, expect to pay anywhere from $1,000 or more.
Check out our flight options page to learn about options you have to fly into Kathmandu.
