For many people, the simple idea of getting on a giant machine that weighs thousands of pounds and flies through the air is just ridiculous. There are too many stories out there of these massive jet planes doing nosedives into the ocean, or slamming into mountains. Add to that the fact that not all airports are created equal. While most are perfectly safe and require little effort to access successfully, there are some that are downright treacherous.
There is the Midway International Airport in Chicago Ill which, from above, looks like a maze of runways set up to handle planes coming in from all directions at once. There is the Narsarsuaq Airport in Greenland where, more often than not, the runway is covered in a sheet of pure ice. And we cannot forget the infamous Gustaf III Airport in the Pinteresque island of St. Bart’s, where planes just miss clipping the roofs of passing cars right before touching down. With these things in mind, here is our little missive on 34 of the world’s most dangerous airports.
Princess Juliana International Airport, St. Maarten
Welcome to St Maarten ladies and gentlemen, where we’ve built a runway where only sadistic airline pilots dare to land, while tourist risk injury and death for the adrenaline rush. Not sure who is crazier here, the engineers that decided that building a runway barely big enough to land a large jet would be a good idea, or the people who stand within a few feet of a jet as it passes above? With that said, I’d be lying if I told you I wouldn’t do it given the chance; the adrenaline rush must be off the charts!
Alexandros Papadiamantis Airport, Skiathos
In yet another seemingly death defying stunt, we introduce the Alexandros Papadiamantis Airport, in Skiathos, Greece. With the runway leading right to the edge of a public road, passersby and tourist are treated to the unimaginable sensation of having a 225,000 pound jet coming in for a landing a mere 30 feet off the ground, all while doing so at well over 150 miles per hour! As crazy as this entire thing sounds, there have been no reported incidents of people being hit by the planes overhead, and no jet has crashed due to striking a pedestrian on the roadway.
Courchevel International Airport
If you like to ski, and only the best and most exotic slopes will do, then you must travel to Courchevel, France. With that said, this is easier said than done. Yes, you can drive there, but be ready to spend hours traversing small, windy, and dangerous roads. Or, if you are a person of means, you can just catch a little Buddy Holly Special, and fly your way there in a jiffy. However, there is one problem, the runway is on the side of a mountain, and, as you can see from the above photo, landing there allows no room for error. Good luck!
Agatti Airport, India
Once again, if you love those exotic locals and want to get away from the hustle and bustle of your day job, then book yourself a trip to the beautiful island of Agatti. This paradise sits just off the Indian mainland, and is surrounded by the kind of clear blue water you only see in those travel commercials. While you could fly into the mainland and just take a boat to the island, where’s the fun in that? The way to go is to jump on a tiny prop plane so that you can take in the splendor that is Agatti. Just keep your fingers crossed that the pilot doesn’t over-run the landing strip.
John Wayne Airport, Orange County (California)
Coming into John Wayne Airport in Orange County California is really not that big a deal. I’ve done it on more than a few occasions and, outside of having to fly low over the parking lot of traffic known as the 405 freeway, you’ll make a smooth landing without issue. However, flying out is a different gig all together. Due to the local communities efforts to reduce the noise from the jet engines, pilots have to depart at a radically steep attack angle so that they can get away from the area as quickly as possible; a very unnerving event to be sure!
Kansai International Airport, Japan
Okay, it’s no secret that the Japanese like to do their own thing, and at times, that thing might seem a bit unusual, like building an entire airport in the ocean known as Kansai International. Kansai International was built on a manmade island back in 1994. Country leaders chose this option so as to avoid building on an already packed land base, and to avoid upsetting the environment. This has turned out to be a risky proposition as the island continues to settle into the earth, which means the airport sinks just a bit every year. To counter this, engineers installed jacks that actually raise the airport terminals as they sink!
Reagan National Airport, Washington, D.C.
Flying in and out of Reagan National Airport is dangerous, but not for the same reasons as other landing spots on out list. It’s not buried in a hazardous mountainous region; the runways are not perilously short; and the airport is not sinking into the sea. But it is dangerous for other reasons. First, it’s right in the heart of the nation’s capital, putting it square in the crosshairs of every self-respecting terrorist. The pilots have to navigate their way in between the no-fly zones of the Pentagon and the CIA. And, if they don’t make a quick, and uneasy left turn as soon as they’re airborne, they fly directly over the White House which is a big no, no!
Don Mueang International airport Thailand
Now, while this may not be as dangerous of an airport to fly in and out of for passengers as the others on this list, it does pose a very great risk to those who dare play a round of golf on the golf course set directly in between the facility’s two runways. No, you’re not misreading that, there is an actual golf course set up in between the active runways where you can play through till your heart’s content. Evidently, there are restrictions on play during any take off or landing, but I wouldn’t want to be standing there with my “nine iron” in hand as a twenty-ton jet slides off the runway and right into my golfcart.
Catalina Airport, Avalon, California
Catalina Island is a small parcel of land within sight of the Los Angeles area. It’s a big time tourist attraction and can be reached by both sea and air. The ferry will take you a couple of hours, so if you’re looking to avoid getting sea sick, and you have the extra cash, you can charter a plane and you’ll be there in a flash. But in doing so, you must prepare yourself for the uncertainty of flying a small prop plane over the open Pacific Ocean in often foggy conditions, only to arrive at what is more a glorified landing strip on the top of a large hill than an actual airport. Enjoy!
La Guardia International Airport (NYC)
Ah, the idea of visiting the “Big Apple” is a thrill! You can bump around the city on the subway, see Times Square, and visit the Empire State Building. But before you do, you’ve got to get there, and that means La Guardia airport, an airport that is a disaster on just about every level. Outside of slow city buses or expensive taxis, there is no real public transport to get there. Once there, the terminal is a hot mess of confusion. And coming in to land means you are navigating some of the busiest air traffic in the world, and landing on one of the shortest runways in the country.
Telluride Regional Airport, Colorado
Telluride Colorado is famous for two things; first, existing as the playland of the uber rich and famous. And secondly, as the home of one of the more dangerous airports in the country, with a runway that runs perilously to the the edge of a steep cliff. Now, if you’re a person of means, you can charter your own private jet and take in this jewel of the Colorado mountains on the quick. But be prepared for the hair raising experience of navigating jagged mountains, dealing with heavy fog, and landing on a runway that, if you’re pilot is not on the brakes, will dump you deep into the canyon below!
Midway International Airport, Chicago
I know people may be avoiding Chicago these days do to the constant reporting of mass crime in the area, but I’m not going for another reason. A quick glance at the ariel view of the endless crisscrossing runways of Chicago’s Midway International Airport should give anyone second thoughts about a trip to the windy city. Imagine having to be an air traffic controller trying to play traffic cop and organize the wide array of giant 747’s and enormous a380 superliners as they make their way into one of the busiest airports in the world? Nah, I’m good.
Sitka Rocky Gutierrez Airport, Sitka, Alaska
Talk about no room for error; if your pilot comes up a hair short, you’re in the drink. If your pilot banks a bit too much to the right, you are crashing into an island. If your pilot overshoots the runway and is forced to perform an emergency go around, you could end up slamming into the face of a mountain. No matter which way you slice it, you’re pilots need to be on top of their game in every conceivable way. If not, then the views from above the beautiful Sitka Bay may be the last ones you’ll see.
Yeager Airport, Charleston, West Virginia
When it comes to either flying into, or leaving out of, Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia, you had better hope and pray that you have a good pilot, because from the looks of it, there is little room for error. If you are departing, and you have not achieved the point of “rotate,” pilot jargon for the time when the plane actually takes flight, in a timely manner, you may be dropping off into the drink below. If you are coming in for a landing a bit to low, you might just go “splat” right into the side of the cliff!
San Diego International Airport, San Diego
If you’ve even been to San Diego, it’s famous as a small town with a major Marine Corps air base, a major league baseball team, and sharing a very busy border with Mexico. It is also the home to an international airport that, while its location seems harmless enough, it is anything but, making it a very dangerous place to fly in or out of. It is in the middle of a busy downtown area, and just north of a very, off limits Mexican airspace. Lastly, there exists a very unsettling tail wind that makes both takeoffs and landings white knuckling experiences.
Madeira Airport, Portugal
The landing strip at the Madeira Airport is disconcerting to say the least. If you look closely, you will see that half of it is not built directly on solid ground, but rather on an asphalt roadway supported by what look to be steel columns. Now I don’t know about you, but when I’m coming in to land in a jet that weighs over 50 tons, I want to do so on a runway that is paved directly on top of solid earth, not a man made road held up by columns. But hey, that’s just me, maybe you’re fine with the possibility of the runway collapsing leaving you to end up in the ocean?
Narsarsuaq Airport, Greenland
If you are familiar with Greenland, then you’ll know that it is a country that is constantly dealing with unbearably cold weather, something that does not bode well if you’re a pilot trying to land a passenger jet. Besides a runways that will often be covered in a sheet of pure ice, the cold air creates a very unstable environment for aviators, with incredibly amounts of turbulence as the norm. But no worries, if you’re fine with the turbulence and the icy runways, than the nearby erupting volcano shouldn’t really be too much for you to handle, right?
Matekane Air Strip, Lesotho
There are tiny enclaves around the world where infrastructure is nothing but a pipe dream, and the only real access is either by donkey or by plane; this, is one of those enclaves. The Matekane Air Strip is in a country you’ve probably never herd of, Lesotho. Neighboring South Africa, Lesotho sits on top of a mountainous area and contains not a paved runway, but a grass airstrip only 1700 feet in length. Just navigating the vast mountains and canyons to get there is disconcerting enough, and once you do touch down, you’ve got to hit the breaks hard to avoid ramming into the rocks at the end of the strip!
Paro Airport, Bhutan
In yet another chapter of “let’s play slaloms with the mountains,” we have Paro Airport in the lovely region of Bhutan. With most airports, big jets can simply lock in on the final approach, turn on the auto pilot, and cruise the rest of the way for a soft touch landing. However, the approach to Paro airport requires pilots to hand fly the jet through a slalom of mountain ranges, almost grazing the jagged edges below. And only after three left turns and one, very sharp right that makes you feel as if you can reach out and touch the terrain below, do you actually land on the tarmac. This is not for the faint at heart!
Papua New Guinea
Papa New Guinea is considered to be one of the most beautiful and scenic regions in the world. It is also a hub for travel with a wide variety of airports able to get tourists in and out without issue. With that said, if your really want to get to some of the more remote areas of the country, you’re going to have to hop on to one of those nerve wracking, small prop planes which seem to bump all over the place with the slightest breeze. If that’s not enough, you’ll also find yourself setting down in areas where the landing strip is more akin to a dilapidated, asphalt slab than a modern runway.
Aspen/Pitkin County Airport, Colorado
The Aspen/Pitkin County Airport in Colorado makes our list for a few reasons. First off, it lies in the heart of some of the highest mountains in the country. The runway sits snug up to the edge of the mountain, which means that, if a pilot requires a last second go around, he must make the decision sooner than later. And coming in on approach also requires a higher grade of decent beyond the standard 3%. In the end, pilots who look to fly into this mountainous paradise must receive special training just to do so.
The Ice Runway, Antarctica
Okay, if you’ve ever lived in the Northeastern part of the United States, you are familiar with icy weather conditions. Just leaving your apartment to get to the subway is a challenge, and simply not busting your butt on the ice equates to a great victory. Now imagine a 100,000 pound jet airliner attempting to land on the same icy conditions on which you regularly slip on the ice, and you have the “Ice Runway” in Antarctica. Just how these pilots manage to land in these conditions is unmanageable.
Gibraltar International Airport, Gibraltar
Okay, it’s pretty normal to require a stop light at an intersection so that opposing traffic and pedestrians might make their way across without issue, but a stop light at an intersection so a full-size commercial jetliner might cross? Well, that is exactly what is happening many times a day on the famous, “Rock of Gibraltar.” Due to a limited land mass, and heavily reliance on tourist dollars, officials on the island had no other option but to build an airport right in the middle of town, with a runway crossing a major pubic road. You have to do what you have to do.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Antilles
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is located on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba. If you are looking for an adventurous plane ride, you’ve found it here, because this airport is speculated to be the smallest commercial airport in the world. The only types of planes that are able to land on such a tiny strip are small, propeller planes capable of stopping on the quick. Not only is the runway only 400 meters, but it is also incredibly narrow, requiring the pilots to turn their airplane around on a dime, or else risk falling into the ocean.
MCAS Futenma Okinawa, Japan
The MCAS in Futenma Okinawa, Japan is not a public or commercial airport. The MCAS stands for Marine Corps Air Station, so it is actually an American military base, but it still makes our list of dangerous airports nonetheless. This is not because the runway is too short or the weather is bad, but rather because this thing is set up smack dab in the middle of a highly populated city with houses packed in from all sides. This is not the location that you would want to hold military air exercises, as one small mishap could take out an entire neighborhood of civilians.
Toncontin International Airport, Honduras
There are airports on this list with limited visibility, landing strips covered in ice, and even some in war zones, but they might not live up to the adventure one has flying into the maze that is Toncontin International Airport in Honduras. The thing is smack dab in the middle of a densely populated neighborhood, the runway is too short, and the pilots must navigate a maze of mountains and hillsides just to reach the thing. And, as the above photo indicates, they don’t always make it.
Damascus International Airport, Syria
Of all of the airports on this list, the Damascus International Airport in Syria may be the most dangerous, not because the runway is too short, or because the weather conditions are bad, but because of the consistent risk of becoming a victim of violence. It is so bad that even the United States government has a travel advisory on their website that warns against traveling to the region for risk of civil unrest, kidnapping, terrorism, armed conflict, and unjust detention. If that’s not enough, the validity of the safety records of the airlines that fly in and out of the country should also cause you pause.
Kai Tak Airport, Hong Kong
Hong Kong is a compact island off the coast of mainland China with a population of over seven million inhabitants. To fit all these people, developers have created a mass metropolis akin to the size of New York City, with an incredible amount of high rise apartment buildings crammed into a tiny chunk of land. And right in the middle of all this development lies the the Kai Tak airport. In order to reach the runway, pilots must navigate a very tight turn while dodging these high rises. This combined with the mountainous regions makes landing here a very dicey proposal.
Gustaf III Airport, St. Bart’s
Gustaf III Airport in St. Bart’s is on my bucket list of things I must do before I die. In order to make this work with the limited land they had, the engineers were required to build a runway that begins at the very foot of the hill, and continued to the water’s edge. The only problem is that pilots must hug that hill face as closely as possible, narrowly missing an active roadway at the top, in order to touchdown in the proper spot to avoid ending up in the drink. While they are successful most of the time, there have been instances where they have taken an unexpected dip in that crystal blue water.
Congonhas Airport (Sao Paulo), Brazil
Brasil is known for it’s vibrant community and incredible music. It is also known as having one of the more dangerous airports in the world, the Gongonhas Airport in Sao Paulo. Gongonhas earned its dangerous reputation due to the runway’s poor drainage system resulting in very slippery conditions. This, combined with a shorter than average runway and the need to navigate the litany of tall buildings in the area, puts this airport towards the top of this list of the world’s most dangerous.
Svalbard Airport, Norway
Talk about a slippery situation! If you plan on flying into Svalbard airport in Norway, keep in mind that the actual runway was constructed on top of permafrost. In other words, they built the darn thing on top of ice! If landing on a runway made of ice isn’t enough to scare you to death, then also keep in mind that, on your trip to that icy runway, your pilot will have to navigate immense mountain ranges, and sometimes terrible weather conditions. This is also the site of the worst air disaster in the country’s history when a plane carrying 141 people slammed into the mountainside due to pilot error.
Gisborne Airport, New Zealand
You have arrived in Gisborne Airport, in the small country of New Zealand. At first glance, one might believe this is only a photoshop, but not so fast, this is a real train crossing a real runway, with a real plane getting ready for takeoff. The railway was here first, but it was crossing some real estate that was prime for an airport. And you know how greedy those politicians can be, so rather than spending the money to re-route the railway, the leadership just built the airstrip right on top of it. You had better hope that the train engineer and the airline pilot don’t get their signals crossed.
Barra Airport, Scotland
Airplane; check. Pilot; check. Control tower; check. Airstrip; uh, no, not so much. Welcome to Barra Airport in the very Scottish country of Scotland, where pilots have to rely on the tidal levels to determine when they can take off and land. There is not a runway in the traditional sense, only a beach, and at low tide, small prop planes make their way onto, and off of, the beach with ease. But at higher tides, the planes are grounded and the beach returns to being an open space for the public to soak up some rays, and take to the water.
Tenzing-Hillary (Lukla) Airport, Nepal
Labeled as one of the most dangerous airports in the world, the Tenzing-Hillary airport in Nepal is no joke. Enzing-Hillary earned this distinction because it is located in some of the densest mountainous regions in the country; regions that are often covered in a mass of fog, reducing visibility down to nothing. If that wasn’t bad enough, the runway is so short that they were forced to construct it with a grade as a way to slow the incoming planes down, and to help propel the departing ones. If you ever develop an itch to visit Nepal, you might want to avoid Tenzing-Hillary.