Landing at the World's Most Dangerous Airport

That's one short runway. The pilot has to touch down as soon as possible and hit the reverse throttle. You can't abort a landing, because there's a mountain at the end of the runway. This runway makes Kai-Tak Airport look downright civilized.

Tenzing–Hillary Airport in Lukla, Nepal, is known as the most dangerous airport in the world. However, it is fairly busy ferrying mountain climbers to the drop-off point for Everest Base Camp. It also ferries in almost everything else, too, because there are no roads to the area. The single runway is only 1,729 feet (527 meters) long, with a mountain at one end and a drop-off at the other. Only certain kind of aircraft can land there, and pilots have to reach rigorous STOL (short takeoff and landing) milestones before they are certified to use the airport.

Let's see that from the pilot's perspective. You won't see the airport until about 1:20.

Tenzing–Hillary Airport is at an elevation of 9,334 feet (2,845 meters), which is 1500 feet higher than Aspen Airport in Colorado. But Aspen's runway is more than 8,000 feet long! -via Boing Boing 

#airport #runway #Lukla #STOL #TenzingHillaryAirport


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