10. Svalbard Airport, Longyear, Norway
It is the main airport and serves the archipelago of Syalbard in Norway. There are also two other airports but this airport is particularly used for commercial flights and is the world’s Northern most commercial airport. Due to its location with close proximity to the North Pole, it experiences all general weather dangers above the Arctic Circle.
9. Princess Juliana International Airport, St Maarten
This airport is also known as Sint Maarten international airport and provides services to the Dutch part of the island of Saint Martin. It is a scary airport but it is still one of the busiest Caribbean’s airports. It is particularly renowned for very low flyover landing approaches as its one end is extensively close to the shore and Maho Beach. Before landing the airport, the pilots have to flight a little over oceans and cross a number of fences. The landing strip of this strip is not safe for any aircraft. Tourists enjoy the landings of airplanes but even the force from the engines can cause harm to onlookers.
8. Madeira International Airport, Portugal
It is an international airport in the Portuguese archipelago of the Madeira. This airport is competent to land commercial size airplanes and therefore its development was extremely important. Its original runway was just 5000 feet long making this airport infamous. It was encircled by the ocean and high mountains, made it a challenging landing space for even the most experienced pilots. The runway of this airport has extended to over 9000 feet by constructing a heavy girder bridge atop of 200 pillars but still it is considered a dangerous airport that has limited the tourism and imports.
7. Kansai International Airport, Japan
The distinctive feature of this airport is that, it is situated on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, Japan. It is at fifty kilometers on South West of Kansai and due to scarcity of land this airport was built by the engineers in the water. This airport is the second most important international airport of the Japan. People can get access to this airport from the road by a bridge that joins the airport to the fast lane. Rising sea levels and climate change still pose very serious hazards to the airports existence. According to experts of global warming, it is difficult that this airport exists over fifty years.
6. Juancho E. Yrasquin Airport, Saba Island
This is the only airport located on the Caribbean island of Saba and is just 1,300 feet long. The alternative title of this airport should be “Good luck”. It is situated at one side of high hills and at the end of both runways the cliffs drop into the sea. The runways of this airport are just 400 meters long and the sea starts right after them, all these situations make a slightly higher risk for takeoff and landing. Even experienced pilots need extra attention and concentration when using the airport of this paradise as just one wrong move will cause the plane in the water. It is officially closed for traffic and only small aircraft can land here.
5. Lukla Airport, Nepal
Lukla Airport is a small airport in the Lukla town in Japan, it is also known as Tenzing –Hillary airport. This airport is famous as Lukla is the destination where most of the people begin the climb to Mount Everest Base Camp. There are routine flights between Kathmandu and Lukla during daytime in favorable weather conditions. And there is tremendous traffic between Lukla and Kathmandu, when the plane lands , sirens inform individuals to take caution. Cloud cover, high winds, and poor visibility often can delay of flights or closure of airport. The elevation of this airport is 9,200 feet, at the southern end there is a sudden drop off down to a river valley below, at the northern end there is a huge hill just behind the landing strip, and a hairpin turn makes this a scariest airport. Its working is operated by the contemporary air trafficking system.
4. Barra Airport, Scotland
It is a short runway airport that is located in the wide shallow bay at the northern tip of the island of Barra in Scotland. Barra Airport is a unique airport as it is the only airport in the world where due flights use beach as the runway. The beach is deployed with three runways in the form of triangles, notable with permanent wooden bars at their end that always allow the planes like Twin Otters to land into the wind. When high tide come, the runways go under the sea, therefore the schedules of flights are based on the tides. Emergency flights hardly operate at night, vehicle lights are used to brighten the reflective strips and the runway lay on the beach.
3. Gibraltar Airport, Spain
Gibraltar International Airport is the civilian airport that provides services to the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The distinctive feature about this airport is that it intersects with the main road that leads towards the land border with Spain and this thing makes it dangerous too. It is one of the world’s most extreme airports and one of the Europe’s most dangerous airports. Every times an aircraft lands or takes off the traffic on the busy street has to be stopped. It is the only airport in the world that intersects with the busy street and traffic and amazingly, it has not experienced any dangerous accident. Its runway also extends into the sea and due to this reason on Jan, 2012 it was selected as one of the scariest Airport landings and take off’s in the travel portion of some magazine.
2. Courchevel International Airport, France
It is a French airport that serves Courchevel, and is located in a ski area in the French Alps Mountains. It has a very short runway of just 525 meters and there is no ground operation for this airport. There are no instrument approach procedures for this runway and therefore makes the landing in low clouds and fog almost impossible. It is deliberated as a dangerous airport, as it features a hard approach, an upslope runway with a hill in the middle of the strip, and is adjacent to a famous area for ski runs. In order to get to this crazy airstrip, one must have to cross the French Alps. This airport serves only small fixed winged helicopters and aircraft and the airfield has an elevation of approximately 2,008 meters.
1. Ice Runway, Antarctica
It is the principal runway for the United States Antarctic program during the summer field season due to its closeness to McMurdo Station. It is one of the world’s coldest airports, and its runway is concreted with manicured snow. It was designed in order to transport passengers to free up the cargo capacity space brought by the C17 aircraft and this airport is eligible to handle wheeled aircrafts.
According to the pilots, the surface of this runway is as stable as cement during landing but the problem is that almost 45,000 pound weight of the aircraft, including passengers and cargo, causes the plane to sink into ice, although only a few inches.
It is always a challenging and hard task to safely land the plane on it and the trick that pilots should know properly is to make sure that the ice will not burst during landing. If the ice starts breaking up, then the planes are diverted towards other fields, where it optimistically is not breaking up.