[Travel] Unusual airports

[FatSuperman]

Courchevel airport in The Three Valley is interesting.....with a cliff edge at one end.

Not content with it being a cracked, icy runway, they thought they'd add a jump in!?

 

[FatSuperman]

Courchevel airport in The Three Valley is interesting.....with a cliff edge at one end.

Not content with it being a cracked, icy runway, they thought they'd add a jump in!?

 

[Doonhamer7]

I worked in Ethiopia in the mid to late 90s, Mekele Airport was a gravel runway- I didn’t know until we flew in and landed and you hear the gravel hitting the plane - I thought we were be shot at. Then Asmara Airport ( in Eritrea) has loads of burnout tanks around the runway - no one had got round to removing them after the war.

Ethiopian airways was fun, every used to applaud when ever we landed !! The pilot really only has two jobs to do and the most important is land the plane, he doesn’t need applauded for doing his day job.

 

[Juan Albion]

I worked in Ethiopia in the mid to late 90s, Mekele Airport was a gravel runway- I didn’t know until we flew in and landed and you hear the gravel hitting the plane - I thought we were be shot at. Then Asmara Airport ( in Eritrea) has loads of burnout tanks around the runway - no one had got round to removing them after the war.

That must have been an eye-opener. I thought Managua was bad with its machine gun nests but at least they didn't have tanks.

Ethiopian airways was fun, every used to applaud when ever we landed !! The pilot really only has two jobs to do and the most important is land the plane, he doesn’t need applauded for doing his day job.

I used to think it was only Americans who did that but I'm ashamed to say that on said trip to Rio Hato, they clapped on landing in both directions. Canadians are wannabe Yanks I guess.

 

[perseus]

Barra

 

[perseus]

 

[Cesar Chavez]

La Guardia is unusual in that it is so incredibly shit for serving a city as large as NY.

As well as being a total dump, there is no public transport into Manhattan.

What’s that all about?


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There is a bus service to the subway, see below, my favorite was the M60 as it went along 125th Street, or the bus link to the 7 subway line.:

Bus
By the bus routes M60 SBS, Q70, Q47, Q72 and Q48, it is easy to connect to both subway and rail in NYC, Manhattan and Queens from LaGuardia Airport, and Long Island.

It is advisable to possess MetroCard to get better fares and to travel with certain bus lines.

 

[Snowy]

[MENTION=20]Publius Ovidius[/MENTION] that reminds me of Hamilton Island Airport in Queensland.

I particularly liked the luggage collection system. A luggage buggy is driven to the plane, all the cases are loaded on, then it drives back and stops outside the terminal. At that point it's a free-for-all to collect your cases directly from the buggy.

Yes, to fit in the airport at Hamilton Island they had to construct a runway right across the island, cutting it in two. Then, for good measure they made the island next door into one big golf course!

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[Heffle Gull]

View attachment 104871

Boa Vista airport. Cape Verde.

Heading there in June. Is the airport interesting?

 

[banjo]

Heading there in June. Is the airport interesting?

No, not really. Unusual yes.

 

[Mr Putdown]

I used to fly into Dounreay regularly back in the 80’s. On more than one occasion our landing had to be aborted due to cows on the runway.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Not content with it being a cracked, icy runway, they thought they'd add a jump in!?

Yeah. It’s crazy how planes land. They come in from the cliff edge end and land but it’s immediately uphill. Taking off is the other direction, downhill then the cliff edge.

 

[Stumpy Tim]

I flew into Quito, Ecuador last week. Apparently they moved the airport six years ago as the previous one was too dangerous. It's still surrounded by volcanoes and glaciers as you fly in, and is 2,850m above sea level so the planes performance is apparently less reliable... and you do tend to feel quite light headed when you get off the plane. It's a cracking journey into the city though - stunning views.

 

[Arthur]

Skiathos has a ridiculously short runway, hard on the brakes only experienced pilots allowed.

Seconded. Most interesting landing I've ever had. Pilot came on just before coming down and said something along the lines of "those of you that have been here before know what is coming, those of you that haven't you are about to witness the amazing breaking power of a 747". Its almost like you touch down and the pilot whacks the handbreak on.

I've done Madera as also mentioned on this thread but Skiathos makes the landing at Madera look like you are landing on miles of bouncy castles made of jelly.

I quite like Gibraltar airport whose runway basically runs across the Spanish entrance and exit to/from the country, necessitating all traffic to be held up whenever a plane flies in or out, which sometimes amounts to as much as two hours a day. A diversion route was planned in 2009 but to-date still hasn't been built!

I'm out in Gib once a month or so. Love Gib airport. Landing can be a bit hairy and I have been diverted to Malaga a couple of times. You can turn up five mins before the flight buy a bottle of scotch for a fiver and 200 fags for a score and still make you flight.

Other interesting landings......Lisbon you practically land past peoples houses. Osaka....sea, sea, sea, sea, sea, sea.....there is a runway here somewhere right?? sea, sea, sea.....runway!

 

[Two Professors]

Courchevel airport in The Three Valley is interesting.....with a cliff edge at one end.

Is that the one Bond escaped from,supposedly in Russia?

 

[Two Professors]

Flew to La Rochelle recently. The airport is so small it makes Shoreham airport (sorry Brighton City airport) look big and bustling by comparison.

Been flying there for some years,and the facilities have vastly improved recently!
Talking of facilities,Seeb International in Muscat just had a gendarme with a metal detector at the gate when I landed there in the '70s,no buildings at all.The original airstrip became the main road into town.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Is that the one Bond escaped from,supposedly in Russia?

I don’t know. I’ve not kept up with recent Bond films. But the way Couchevel has gone in recent years it is now like Little Russia.

The most famous Bond ski scene in the alps was filmed on the Schilthorn in Switzerland which I have snowboarded. And Entering into the spirit of things I had two martinis on top of the lunch time wine and snowboarded all the way from the top. I recall I did most of it on my arse.

 

[Cowfold Seagull]

Airport in Madeira is hairy to say the least.

Indeed. Funchal is generally regarded as the toughest airport in Europe from which to take off or land, and one of the very few Category C airports in the world

 

[Sussexscots]

Was on a flight to Vancouver a few years back and a guy on the plane to had a suspected heart attack so we were diverted to Yellowknife.



Interesting baggage reclaim



Strangely, I bumped into the bloke in a bar in Vancouver a week later, right as rain, happily and he hadn't had a heart attack. He said the Medical Facilities in Yellowknife were absolutely state of the art and if you were ever taken ill on a plane, that was the place to go!

 

[happypig]

Chania, Crete is interesting as it's on top of a cliff so you come in about 500 feet off the ground then all of a sudden you've landed. Like all Greek airports it's pixellated on google maps