Bottom line - the wind issues at Funchal are due to the prevailing wind directions, speeds, and the
rapidly rising or uneven terrain north and west of the airport. Which creates gusts and turbulence, and directional instability for any airplane when they are present.
There is nothing that a
longer runway does to mitigate those (a wider runway - perhaps 3x normal, might help
).
There is also nothing in the improved NAV systems of aircraft since 1964 that mitigates the weather, since the landing still has to to be hand-flown (and the rougher the winds, the
more likely that autoland limits are exceeded.)
The only "changes" that would
count would be either changing the prevailing wind direction and speeds (you'd have to talk to The Creator about that) or bulldozing flat a couple of dozen cubic
miles of Madeira's dramatic eastern coastline, which I expect would be worse for tourism than the occasional flight diversion.