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(#5) Courchevel Airport
- Courchevel
Courchevel Airport is located in the Alps of France. It features one of the shortest runways in the world, spanning about 1,722 feet long. The uphill landing strip runs at a gradient measuring 18.5% to slow an aircraft down before it runs out of landing strip. As if that's not risky enough, specially certified pilots also have to navigate their way through valleys and ski slopes before landing.
The adrenaline-inducing Courchevel Airport is aptly featured in the 1997 James Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies.
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(#3) Tenzing-Hillary Airport
- Lukla, Nepal
Imagine setting out to climb Mount Everest - but it's the airplane landing that is the riskiest part of the journey. Most climbers who plan to summit Everest first need to fly into Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Nepal. The airport's landing strip is not only relatively short - at 1,729 feet long - but it also sits atop a steep cliff that has been carved into the mountainside. Pilots also have to navigate their way through harsh, variable weather and snow-covered mountains.
If that isn't troublesome enough, there isn't even a radar system in place at Tenzing-Hillary. This means a voice communications system is the only way to track the weather. Air traffic controller Dinesh Koirala describes how he communicates with pilots flying into Nepal:
The pilots tell us when they are approaching, we give them updates on wind and traffic, then as the aircraft enters Lukla valley, we warn choppers to steer clear for the landing... It's unfair to call Lukla the most dangerous airport when there's not much we can do about the terrain or the weather.
However, Nischal K.C., a helicopter pilot who has often navigated into the airport, said, "It's high-stakes work and there's very little room for error."
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(#1) Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport
- Saba, Netherlands
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport is located in Saba in the Caribbean Islands. If a traveler wants to fly into Saba, they will have to land at Juancho E. Yrausquin, as it is the only airport on the island.
It features the shortest commercial runway in the world, measuring a mere 1,312 feet. There is absolutely no room for error since the runway ends with high cliffs on both sides, and the Caribbean Sea awaits at the bottom of the cliffs.
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(#10) Sandane Airport, Anda
- Anda, Norway
Sandane Airport in Norway is nestled on a peninsula between two fjords - Nordfjorden and Gloppefjorden - and its asphalt runway measures just over 3,000 feet long. The location of the airport makes the landing area extremely narrow.
Adding to the degree of perilousness are the heavy winds and turbulence.
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(#6) Narsarsuaq Airport
- Nuuk, Greenland
Landing at Narsarsuaq Airport in Greenland is so perilous that only pilots who have full knowledge of the weather patterns and local terrain are allowed to land there. A pilot must fly up a fjord on their runway approach and navigate through heavy winds, turbulence, and often snowy or icy weather.
The conditions are so difficult that nighttime takeoffs and landings are not allowed at Narsarsuaq.
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(#12) Barra Airport
- Outer Hebrides, United Kingdom
Barra Airport in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, is absolutely one of a kind. It is the only airport in the entire world that uses a beach as its runway - which also happens to disappear twice a day when Tràigh Mhòr gets washed out by high tide.
Barra beat out several popular tropical destinations as the "most scenic" airport in the world.
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Airplane take-off and landing are two dangerous periods. In particular, landing requires the higher overall performance of the airplane and airport runway. Every year, there will be various rankings of the most terrifying airport landings on the Internet, and people can watch some terrible and exciting landing processes. With the continuous development of tourism and transportation, more and more airports are built all over the world.
In some of the most dangerous airports in the world, once the landing fails, there are plane crashes and deaths. Lukla Airport in Nepal is known as the most dangerous airport in the world. The length of the airport runway is only less than 500 meters, and there is a cliff on one side of the runway, which means that if the landing fails, the plane will directly hit the cliff. You could watch random 13 videos of the scariest airports on this page.
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