When you’re flying from here to there, you likely don’t pay any mind to the runways you’re taking off and landing on. Well, you only pay them enough mind to hope that you land and take off from them successfully!
But, runways can actually be pretty interesting things. In fact, there are some totally unique ones in the world that you might not believe! Below, we’re going to take a look at 15 of the weirdest airports in the world, from one with an incredible surprise to another that has train tracks that literally cross right over it!
1. Courchevel Altiport (France)
High up in the Alps, you’ll find this tiny little airport. Yes, that’s a runway with a slope to it, and yes it’s treacherous up there!
2. Gibraltar International Airport (Gibraltar)
That street you see crossing the runway is called Winston Churchill Blvd. Can you imagine getting stuck at this red light… Or running it…
3. Agatti Aerodrome (India)
If you’re landing or taking off on this runway, you’d better make it work, because there is literally no wiggle room at the end of the line!
4. Kansai International Airport (Japan)
Forget Boston’s “Big Dig”! Keeping this airport above water has been one of the most expensive ongoing feats of civil engineering in human history.
5. Don Muang Airport (Thailand)
An airport that also doubles as an 18-hole golf course? That’s kind of cool, but you’d better hope no one is shanking ‘em out there!
6. Wellington Airport (New Zealand)
It’s not the runway itself that makes this one crazy, instead it’s the high winds that make landing here especially difficult.
7. Gustaf III Airport (St. Barts)
Why is it so expensive to fly out to St. Barts for a Caribbean vacation? This tiny airport is a major reason…
8. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport (Saba)
How long is that runway that you see up above? It’s only a scant 400 meters, making it the smallest runway serving commercial air traffic on the planet.
9. Savannah-Hilton Head International Airport (North Carolina)
This runway has something that few other runways do… It has gravestones embedded into it! (They’re for the people who originally owned the land that the airport is built upon.)
10. Princess Juliana International Airport (St. Marteen)
What’s cool about this airport’s runway? Well, incoming flights reach the runway by flying only about 100 feet overhead of a well-trafficked beach.
11. Tenzing-Hillary Airport (Nepal)
How do airplanes take off here? Well, they speed down that incline and then drop off the edge of the cliff, of course…
12. Ice Camp Barneo (The North Pole)
This is perhaps the world’s most remote runway. There’s no word on whether or not Santa uses it as a landing strip for his sleigh, though.
13. Gisborne Airport (New Zealand)
Remember that airport we mentioned where train tracks literally cross over the runway? Well this is that airport!
14. Madeira Airport (Portugal)
Just take a look at that runway. Do we really need to explain to you why it’s found its way onto this list?
15. Barra International Airport (Scotland)
Guess what happens when the tide is high at this Scottish airport? You got it! The runways are underwater…
