I've long considered pilots to be heroes, but this show has increased my admiration for the brave souls at planes' controls.
Sometimes built to accommodate the vagaries of world tourism, airports can have short, strangely situated runways and nemeses like radically shifting winds and wayward birds.
San Diego's Lindbergh Field is the busiest single-runway commercial airport in the US, with almost-constant takeoffs and landings. Congestion was implicated in a 1978 crash that killed 144.
At Portugal's Funchal airport on Madeira, a short runway culminates in a drop-off. In 1977, on its third attempt to touch down, an aircraft overran the landing strip, hit a bridge, and exploded on a beach, killing 131.
High altitude, unpredictable weather, and towering peaks challenge pilots near glitzy Vail, CO, and, at Courchevel in the French Alps, a "short, roller-coaster runway" forces maneuvers on an incline. In the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, pilots make a 90-degree turn to avoid Spanish airspace and cope with cars, trucks, and motorbikes on the runway!
St. Martin boasts one of the most dramatic airport locations; it seems one could reach out and touch overhead planes, whose blowback has propelled tourists into the Caribbean.
The world's most extreme airport is probably no surprise -- Tenzing-Hillary in Nepal, near Mount Everest.
I'd have thought the airport in tiny Saba would have made this list. A reason my ex-husband and I visited the Dutch isle is its hyper-dramatic approach from the sky.
According to Wikipedia, Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport "has the shortest commercial runway in the world, only 400 metres (1,312 ft) long, flanked on one side by high hills, with cliffs that drop into the sea at both ends."
Sometimes built to accommodate the vagaries of world tourism, airports can have short, strangely situated runways and nemeses like radically shifting winds and wayward birds.
San Diego's Lindbergh Field is the busiest single-runway commercial airport in the US, with almost-constant takeoffs and landings. Congestion was implicated in a 1978 crash that killed 144.
At Portugal's Funchal airport on Madeira, a short runway culminates in a drop-off. In 1977, on its third attempt to touch down, an aircraft overran the landing strip, hit a bridge, and exploded on a beach, killing 131.
High altitude, unpredictable weather, and towering peaks challenge pilots near glitzy Vail, CO, and, at Courchevel in the French Alps, a "short, roller-coaster runway" forces maneuvers on an incline. In the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, pilots make a 90-degree turn to avoid Spanish airspace and cope with cars, trucks, and motorbikes on the runway!
St. Martin boasts one of the most dramatic airport locations; it seems one could reach out and touch overhead planes, whose blowback has propelled tourists into the Caribbean.
The world's most extreme airport is probably no surprise -- Tenzing-Hillary in Nepal, near Mount Everest.
I'd have thought the airport in tiny Saba would have made this list. A reason my ex-husband and I visited the Dutch isle is its hyper-dramatic approach from the sky.
According to Wikipedia, Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport "has the shortest commercial runway in the world, only 400 metres (1,312 ft) long, flanked on one side by high hills, with cliffs that drop into the sea at both ends."
