![]() ![]() You can experience a good second best at Japan’s Kansai International Airport, where the two runways appear to float on the water way out in Osaka Bay.Īctually located on a purpose-built artificial island, to minimize noise pollution for city residents, the runways are in fact sizeable affairs (both more than three kilometers long) and connected to the mainland by a four-kilometer bridge.īut from the air, this is the best way to get that “Top Gun” feeling on a commercial carrier. Landing on an aircraft carrier looks thrilling, but you usually have to join the armed services to do it. Kansai International Airport, Osaka, Japan In pride of place might stand the only international airport in the mountainous kingdom of Bhutanĭescending into a narrow, high-altitude bowl amid 6,000-meter peaks, pilots – who have to be specially trained to land here – bank their jets in a sharp right turn before swooping in low over farm houses.Ĩ. If there were awards for remote airways surrounded by dramatic scenery, the Himalayas would be filling a shelf. In between flights to and from Glasgow, the public have open access to the beach/runway.īhutan's Paro Airport deserves an award for beautiful airport surroundings. Pilots wait until the tide is out and then land on the beach – reportedly the only airport in the world where scheduled flights touch down on sand. Rather than think about where to build a tarmac airstrip when you’re short on space, the Outer Hebridean island of Barra took a different approach – it didn’t bother with one. Where else in the world can you pick cockles on a runway? Barra International Airport, Outer Hebrides, Scotland Space is so limited on the southern tip of the Iberian peninsula that the runway bisects the territory’s main highway.Īs aircraft get priority over automobiles in the vehicular pecking order, the road is closed every time a plane takes off or arrives.Ħ. GIBRALTAR TOURIST BOARDįlying toward a gigantic limestone monolith on a landing approach is never easy on the nerves, but in the 6.2-square-kilometer British overseas territory of Gibraltar there’s nowhere else to put an airport except in the shadow of the Rock. Just hope your pilot has landed at Gibraltar before. Wedged on a rocky outcrop at the foot of a mountain and with the end of the tarmac plunging into the sea, touchdown here is a dramatic experience. ![]() Yrausquin Airport, on the island of Saba, has one of the world’s shortest landing strips. Maarten for Caribbean airport thrills, Juancho E. More on CNN: Best in airport food and drinkĤ. Coyote hover and fall (before, thankfully, achieving flying speed and soaring away). Planes sometimes fail to ascend at the end of the runway, conjuring images of a Wile E. Only light aircraft use the airstrip on this remote tabletop plateau in the tiny southern African kingdom. There’s little chance of extending this runway very far – it ends abruptly at the edge of a 600-meter drop. (Editor’s note: We initially referred t o an incorrect Bond film “Goldeneye.”) The scene is so dramatic it was featured as a stunt location in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies.” In winter, the tarmac air strip at the French resort’s altiport, more than 2,000 meters above sea level, is often the only thing not covered in snow.Īircraft fly in through a channel between mountains, landing on a short, steeply sloping runway, complete with vertical drop off, that could almost double as a ski jump. Unlike Caribbean-bound passengers, skiers and snowboarders touching down at Courchevel are usually geared up for an adrenaline fix.
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