Popular Mechanics' 18 Strangest Airports

Great post!! Gibraltar has always been a head scratcher for me.... some of the
shots of jets crossing the intersection are downright bizarre! Julianna as well...
another great photo op airport on the web!

Jedi

 

never seen a runway on a hill before.... yikes!

 

I think that "Most Unique" would have been more appropriate than "Strangest", but it's an interesting collection. The only one I've actually flown into is Denver, whose qualifications for the list are marginal. The included videos of St. Maarten, Saba and Tegucigalpa fully back up their inclusion on the list. Remind me to never fly into the last two of those.....

 

The Gibralta Airport is not a new " concept". The old Washington D.C. Hoover Field ( where the Pentagon is now) had a road crossing the runway equipped with a stop light to stop motorists when an airplane was taking off.I recall seeing Ford Tri-Motors and Curtiss Condors rumbling across the road as they continued their take off run. Then there was the strip on Shaw Island in the San Juans ( Washington) where one had to land at the end of the strip under a telephone line and power up to 75 % power to make the run up the hill to the turn-around pad. If you were on the daily route you went to Waldron Island to land on the strip of beach that was called the airport. They had some strips that were less than a thousand feet with a drop-off of 200 feet at the end and used them every day. I did all of them except Waldron Island. When I find the pictures I'll post them.

 

And, for many years, the 150th Street entrance to Idlewild Airport in New York crossed a taxiway adjacent to runway 13L. (It might have crossed the runway as well, but the last time I was at that crossing was about 52 years ago, so I can't quite remember!) There were railroad-style crossing gates to hold back road traffic when airplanes went by.

 

We have an airport built on a hillside in southern Virginia called Falwell Airport (W24).

Here is a short video of a downhill take-off there in a Cessna.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQL8tt5QV1A&NR=1

I've never been there but it is on my "to do list" one day.
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I have flown into St. Maarten and Saba and they are a blast to fly into. As for Tegucigapa I have wanted to fly into there but after the crash there of the TACA A320 there is less and less commercial traffic flying there.

 

A poor photo of the approach to the Shaw Island strip
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On short final at Shaw, shooting for the cinder patch at the base of the first slope.
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Oh yeah!! Saba is cool, but way to short for our Fokker 50/60. Only flew some really low approaches there.
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