leui two are in the Carib, and were built as fighter airfields during ww2. The one on tiny Saba is the ONLY flat piece of land on the entire island.
The road across the runway is Gibraltar. Again, no where else to extend the runway to when the jet-age came.
Funchal is on Madeira, and was carved out of the mountain. 131 died there on a TAP Air 727 that plunged 200 feet off the end of the then 5250Ft runway in 1977. The runway extension (the pillared section) is considered one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th century.
I love princess juliana airport. mostly for what surrounds it you land on the water #15. later you can sit at the bar where the picture was taken and watch flights come in. stay on the dutch side. Or rent a boat and sail to Barts and have a beer at “cheeseburger in paradise” at 10:00 a.m. it’s a short sail. Check your anchor at 40 ft down visually from your boat. snooze, then set sail to Sint Eustatius, The first country to recognize the US via a cannon salute to our visiting naval vessel (buying gunpowder 177n?. (beautiful island, beautiful people) then to Nevis spend a few days. open a bank account. or go to Anguilla and ask for the Cab owner Mussington. Open a bank account there. Move your money.
Milford sound NZ was a rather fun plane ride as well. You fly in thru the fyords from the ocean side. i think the pilot put an anchore out to stop the plane. but when you get off the plane you realize the bugs stop the plane because when you get off the plane the begin to eat you alive.
A couple of my buds landed at McMurdo Station on a C130 in dead of winter to rescue their sister.
That was a pisser landing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerri_Nielsen
I visited Saba twice. The original 20 Dutch families that settled this ex-volcano, sailed around the island for three days before they found a place to land a boat. The families used a correspondence course on road building, because Dutch civil engineers said building a road to connect the four settlements on the island was impossible. It took the 20 families 20 years to build the road. Everything on the bloody island is always up hill from where you are! The runway length at Saba is 400 meters [1,312 feet].
Princess Juliana Airport on St. Maarten/St. Martin is a hoot; your jumbo jet comes in right over the beach and perimeter road. Tourists come down to the airport fence to see if they can hold on against the trust of the jets as they takeoff. [They can't and get blown end over end. Amazing how that works!] Runway is 2,180 meters [7,152 feet].
Ah, the best airport of all is St. Bart's. Your approach is made over the saddle of two ridges that separate the town of Gustavia from the airport. A road runs either way on top of the ridges and from the town to the airport over the saddle. On approach, the pilot has to make a carrier-type dive to nail the end of the runway. This is imperative, otherwise you can't stop to avoid going into the bay at the end of the airstrip. Pilots who land long, will hit the sandy beach and, if they've enough speed, will be in the water. Runway is 650 meters [2,133 feet]. This is one of the worst airports I've seen. Saba's is just as bad.
