was landed in a stream bed in a valley in alaska once by a bush pilot. had to wear a crash helmet. that was my scariest.
Queenstown, New Zealand. Ugh...
New co-pilot Responding to question from Senior pilot “Can you make it, Can you make it?”: “I don't know, I don't know”.
Pilot responds, “pull up, pull up”.
Plane pulled up, circled, and pilot executed landing. I was really glad to get feet on the ground! Sure would not want to land in this place.
Lytton, B.C. is fun in the summer.
In late 1950`s took off in a non-schedule charter dare Electra 188 with 10 other gutsy passengers at $100 a head and a couple of hotshot pilots at midnight from La Guardia when all the regular airlines were grounded =It was an ice storm- but we didn`t care- It was two days before Christmas- had to get to Albany- Iced up all the way but the Electra took it all in stride-Landed on the iced runway and skidded nicely to the end. It didn’t have any anti-skids, so the brakes were of no use on the icy runway. Pilot turned the Electra off the tarp, coasted up to the fence gate, stopped and we all disembarked, slipping on the ice haha.This was done only with the props...
It was fun coz I was 18 and really brave ha. In those days you could fly anywhere coz the charter pilots would walk thru the terminal trying to drum up business- The pilots were hotdoggers from Korea, and there was no restrictive scheduling as today.
So, only eight passed the final exam.......Were the others buried locally?
A319 landing at Paro.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlKApjc9T2U
Lukla Airport, Nepal
The Airport is 10,000 ft above sea level.
The Runway is only 1750 ft long, and goes down at a 10% incline.
One end of the runway is a rock face, the other is a 2,000 ft. cliff.
On approach, the landing happens from a descending turn onto a short final. There is no go around, you get ONE chance to land. Period.
In summer, during the climbing season, it will see somewhere around 50 fights per day, including the occasional C-130.
One of the airports on my bucket list!
Mark
“Whew!!! That’s the shortest runway I’ve ever landed on” gasped the pilot
“It’s short all right, but it sure is wide” said his pale co pilot
Two scary landings in a C-123K Provider (assault transport) in Laos on the same day in 1970. From my journal:
Fri 20 Mar - Fly 4.3 (4 sorties). Operation Commando Pepper. From Udorn to landing zone and return, twice. Two different landing zones. No radio aids. A long day.
There was very bad visibility to the first landing zone [LS-117 New Xieng Dat, 19-26N 102-44E, 1300 x 90 feet of clay runway, land heading 060, takeoff heading 240], because it was the “smoky season” on the west side of the mountains. I had to put my head out the side window and look straight down to see enough to navigate. There was karst all over that area (limestone columns as much as 1000 feet high), but we were well above them — for the moment. When we were about five minutes away, I gave the pilots the heading and estimated time of arrival over the landing zone. It was a wide spot in a dirt road on the other side of a ridge, so the pilot, Capt. Larry Prose, couldn’t see it until we got there and he banked the aircraft to look down for it. He set up a close-in traffic pattern to keep the landing zone in sight, and then used “commando reverse” to get down quickly (reversed the pitch of the propellers in flight). We dropped like a rock. I didn’t know any airplane could do that, and it scared the heck out of me. We had been told we were going to pick up passengers, but no one was there, so Capt. Prose got on the radio. He was told we should offload the few boxes we brought with us (they looked like vehicle or aircraft parts) and someone would pick them up. Getting out of there was also challenging. We had to climb through smoke and haze between columns of karst, with two turning points, using headings and stop-watch timing.
There was fair visibility to the second landing zone [LS-15 Ban Na, 19-18N 102-57E, 1234 x 52 feet of sod/clay runway, land heading 350, takeoff heading 170], but the approach was over a high hill with a very steep descent into the valley and an uphill landing. As we were planning the mission, an Air America pilot said they wouldn’t try to land there in a C-123 and asked how we planned to do it. One of our pilots said we would take only half a load of fuel so the aircraft would be light enough to have a lower minimum airspeed, approach using full flaps at minimum airspeed, clear the top of the hill by 30 feet, drop the nose and chop the power, then pull up the nose and add power if necessary for the uphill landing. The Air America pilot said, “Well, that ought to work, but I wouldn’t want to try it.” Several of our pilots laughed and one said, “That’s why we get the big bucks!” (Air America pilots were paid a lot more than Air Force pilots.) The approach and landing were hairy, but we did it as planned. The crew chief and I were sent out on the flanks with M-16s to provide cover while onloading refugees. Then we did the downhill takeoff, followed by an immediate sharp right turn because the hill facing us was too high to climb over. All in all, it was a professional piece of flying.
