Buckle Up! Five of the world's most terrifying airports

Sunday, November 6, 2016, 4:05 PM - The eye-poppingly scary approach into the airport on the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Maarten has for years wowed anyone brave enough to stand beneath a 747 as it comes into land.

Pilots make it pretty tight as they arrive, and the spectacle of a massive jetliner cruising just a few metres overhead is a popular draw for the tourists.

Sadly, the route will now be flown by a smaller aircraft, and the 747 took its last jaunt to St. Maarten in late October. But there are plenty of other terrifying airports to fly into -- some with deadly records.

Funchal, Madeira

If you’re looking for a combination of difficult landing area and treacherous weather, the airport on the Portuguese island of Madeira fits the bill.

Aside from being a bit short, the runway has hills on one side and a steep drop into the Atlantic on the other, making for a harrowing approach. It’s not hard to find YouTube clips of white-knuckle landings at the site:

Incredibly, it was once even more dangerous, with a length of only 5,250 ft (1,600 m). This had deadly consequences when, in 1977, TAP Portugal Flight 425 slid off the runway in bad weather and crashed, killing 131 people.

Since then, the runway has been extended twice, and now runs 9,124 ft (2,781 m), but there’s nothing to be done about the occasionally poor conditions, so pilots need to be top flight to tackle this one.

Matekane Airstrip, Lesotho

Like flying in the mountains? At this airstrip, you’ll get better acquainted than you’d like with the highlands of Lesotho, a small country entirely surrounded by South African territory.

Matekane Airstrip only extends about 400 m (1,300 ft), which is … not a lot of room for an aircraft to get up to speed. So what happens when you run out of runway? You get about 600 m of cliffside:

"Depending on the wind in the mountains during take off, it is entirely possible for the aircraft not to be in the air by the end of the airstrip," bush pilot Tom Claytor wrote on his website. "Instead, you shoot off the end of the airstrip out over the Ohohbeng river, then drop down the two thousand foot cliff face until you start flying."

The chances of you personally experiencing this are as remote as the airstrip itself. Claytor says it's mostly used by the small kingdom’s flying doctor service, as part of a route taking them to clinics in small mountain villages that would otherwise be hard to reach by car, if not inaccessible.

So if by chance you ever run into a bush pilot from Lesotho, pat them on the back or buy them a drink. There’s a good chance they’re really, REALLY good at what they do.

Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Saba

As terrifying as the Lesotho airstrip is, at least there’s only one precipitous drop off at the end. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, on the Dutch Caribbean island of Saba, has two.

Built in the 1950s, it’s a diminutive 400 m (1,300 ft), with cliffs on either end. On one side of the runway is the ocean, on the other, the hilly landscape of the island:

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The airport has a good claim to having the shortest commercial runway in the world. It’s also famous for misspelling the name of the former Aruban minister for which it is named (there should be an “I” instead of the “Y”), which is not an auspicious start, on top of its harrowing location and size.

However, Atlas Obscura says the single airline that services the airport has never had any fatalities, and the 12-minute flight (prop planes only) from Sint Maarten beats 90 minutes by boat.

Yes, Sint Maarten. Saba is 12 minutes away from what until recently was a considerably more famous terrifying airport. We guess it's hard to build a non-scary airport when you're on a tiny island and don't have much room to work with.

Toncontin International Airport, Honduras

Toncontin International Airport, in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, is so extremely dangerous, it has not only claimed lives, but helped bring down a government, at least the way the Washington Post tells it.

It is an ugly descent. Its 2,000 m (6,601 ft) length is already on the short side to handle jetliners, and its location means approaching pilots have to make a hard turn just before the runway, and drop very sharply, without the aid of instruments:

It’s exactly as dangerous as it looks. In 1989, a Boeing 727 crashed on approach, killing 131 aboard, and other crashes have taken place since.

It was a 2008 crash that caused major political upheaval. The Post says an Airbus 320 ran out of runway and went down a hillside, striking cars on the way and killing five people, including the pilot. The country’s president ordered the airport closed for two months, and rerouted flights to a military airbase around 80 km away.

This was a big hit to the city’s tourism and commerce, and it made Honduras’ then-president even more unpopular. There were other factors, but the Post says it helped worsen opposition to the president, who was overthrown in a coup less than a year later.

Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal

Tenzing-Hillary Airport in Nepal is named for the first people to officially summit Mount Everest. And if you want to knock such an ascent off your bucket list, and opt for a faster route to camp, you’ll be signing on for a difficult flight to a dangerous place.

Just for starters, the airport’s runway is, of course, very short, at around 500 m (1,700 ft), and Condé Nast Traveller says it’s at such an angle that one end is 60 m higher than the other. Then there’s the location: With a massive drop off on one end, and a mountainside on the other, there's very little room for error:

Adding to all this is the weather, which is very changeable and very treacherous. Not to mention the flight route itself, which Condé Nast says is 40 minutes of flitting between mountains before landing at the airport, which has no instrument guidance. And once there, the weather might cause delays lasting days. In the aftermath of 2015’s massive earthquake in Nepal, which triggered an avalanche on Everest that killed 18 people, rescue pilots were delayed for a day before they could reach the airport.

It all adds up. The airport has claimed several planes, including one crash in 2008 that killed all aboard except the captain.

SOURCES: The Independent | Tom Claytor | Atlas Obscura | Washington Post | Condé Nast Traveller | News.com.au