Flydubai FZ539 Diverts to Lucknow After Hail Shuts Kathmandu’s Only Runway

Flydubai flight FZ539 from Dubai to Kathmandu diverted to Lucknow, India, on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, after a hailstorm left the runway at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport unusable. The Boeing 737 MAX 8 was carrying 161 passengers, according to a statement from Lucknow’s airport.

The jet spent less than two hours on the ground in Lucknow before flying on to Kathmandu. It landed there at about 5:56pm local time, nearly four hours after its scheduled arrival, according to Flightradar24 data.

Forty minutes in the hold, then India

Hail began falling on the airport at around 2pm, and a thick layer settled on the runway and taxiways, Nepal Press reported, citing the airport. The runway turned slippery, disrupting takeoffs and landings.

“A thick layer of hail has accumulated from Taxiway Bravo up to Runway 20,” airport spokesperson Sanjay Kumar told Tourism Info Nepal, which put the start of the suspension at about 1:45pm. The spokesperson said the airport has no equipment designed for removing hail, so firefighting vehicles were used to help clear the runway.

FZ539, which left Dubai at 8:39am local time, arrived in the middle of it. Flightradar24 tracking shows the 737, registered A6-FQK, entering a holding pattern at 17,000 feet, roughly 40 to 55 miles (60 to 90 km) southwest of the airport, at about 1:45pm Nepal time.

It flew several laps of the pattern for about 40 minutes, then climbed away and headed west toward India. It touched down in Lucknow at about 2:50pm India time.

Lucknow airport called the landing “a precautionary operational measure” in a statement carried by the Times of India. After ground formalities and operational coordination, the aircraft left for Kathmandu at 4:36pm, the airport said.

Other flights caught by the storm

FZ539 was not the only flight affected. At least eight aircraft due to land, four international and four domestic, were reportedly holding outside Kathmandu, Tourism Info Nepal said.

On the ground, a Buddha Air flight preparing to leave for Rajbiraj and a Thai Airways flight preparing to leave for Bangkok returned to their parking stands. The reports AeroCorner reviewed do not say whether any of the other held flights also diverted.

The storm also reached the terminal. Rain and hail leaked through the roof of the domestic terminal and flooded the area beyond the check-in counters, a Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal official told Tourism Info Nepal.

Nepal Press later reported that the runway had reopened once the hail was cleared, citing the airport. No exact reopening time appeared in the reports AeroCorner reviewed, and at the time of writing it had found no public statement from flydubai on the diversion.

Why a hailstorm can close Nepal’s gateway

Tribhuvan International Airport is Nepal’s main international airport, and it has a single runway, 02/20, at an elevation of 4,390 feet (1,340 m) in the hill-ringed Kathmandu Valley. With no second runway to switch to, anything that makes that one strip unusable closes the airport.

Three weeks earlier, a pigeon strike on TK726 shut the airport on the morning of October 21 while the runway was cleaned. That cleanup was delayed because the staff responsible were on leave, an airside official said at the time.

Hail lying on a runway behaves like a layer of ice pellets. It cuts the friction an airliner’s brakes depend on, and it has to be physically cleared before a jet can be trusted to stop in the available distance.

Hail in the air is a separate hazard, because large stones can crack windshields and damage the nose cone. Last month an A320 on Yemenia flight IY648 stayed in Jordan for maintenance after flying through hail near Amman. No report says FZ539 itself flew through hail.

Why the jet went to Lucknow

Holding is a fuel decision. Every lap burns part of the reserve a crew carries to reach its alternate, so when the runway does not reopen in time, the flight has to leave for that alternate.

Lucknow sits about 280 miles (450 km) west-southwest of Kathmandu, and it has taken Kathmandu weather diversions before. On the night of October 31, an Air India flight from Delhi diverted to Lucknow and a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to Kolkata, the Kathmandu Post reported.

An alternate has to give a foreign airliner what it needs to wait out a closure, and Lucknow said it provided the ground formalities and operational coordination. Flydubai has not publicly said why its crew chose Lucknow over another airport.