Most Difficult Airfield
 

A friend e-mailed me this link Most difficult landing in the world - Bhutan? - YouTube showing an approach to Bhutan, under the heading "Most difficult landing in the world?".
I would have thought that there might be other candidates for that heading.
Are there ?:confused:

:D My word! I thought that was going to be boring but it definately seems like a chanllenge in a jet. If there were nasty winds or you lost an engine failure I imagine it could get pretty hairy! No idea if there are more challenging ones. Thanks for posting .

Pfftt .... most difficult my bum.
There's about a hundred more difficult runways in Papua New Guinea and no doubt many other examples around the world. And yes I used to fly into some of the easier ones in a Citation.

Last four minutes are defiantly sporting!

My company trained the Druk Air pilots for a while. Our sim instructors were very impressed by their guys - they were very competant and particualrly unphased by their home base. We fly to Kathmandhu and think it's a bit special, but for the Druk Air guys - it's an easy day out.

Paro gets really interesting in an OEI situation. For that reason, Druk Air operate A319s with A321 rated V2500s. A real rocket ship!

I did my command route check into there IFR :eek: The b:mad:s

Gilgit (OPGT, GIL) in Northern Pakistan in the Indus Valley is fairly hilarious. 5,000' up and 5,000' long surrounded by seriously high ground with minimal navaids (NDB only some years ago). PIA run Twotters and ATRs, the military use C130. We went in the Jumbolina.

Lovely fresh water pearls to be had there.

I would be just as frightened looking out the window in some of those homes.:eek:

MHTG, Tegucigalpa, Honduras made it to second place in the worlds most dangerous airports in the world on the discovery channel. 1st place went to an Asian high altitude airport that jets couldn't fly in to. This was my favorite airport in the 757.

What about Courchevel (LFLJ),
elevation 6588ft, 18.5% uphill slope, and less than 1800ft length. Most astonishing, that this airport has served Dash 7's in history.

not sure if it's the most difficult one, but surely one of the most risky. Established at 50ft AGL... :eek:

Lukla airport in Nepal, not for the faint hearted....
See u-tube.

Difficult airfields
 

Try "SARFAIT on the Oman/Yemen border in the "Khareef" (monsoon) and/or in the days when the "other side" had a tendency to shoot at you!
Very life changing!!:eek:

epsum,

Courchevel? Didn't they film a Bond movie there? Lukla has my vote!

Akureyri in Iceland can be entertaining as well - the ILS is right up the middle of a mountain valley, once established inbound you can look out and see terrain above you on both sides. The arrow shows the runway. Once you get to the end, you see that the localizer is offset...


Akureyri, Iceland (BIAR)
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/a...n/Akureyri.jpg

I've been a lurker on pprune for many years and rarely post.

Last year I had the opportunity to sit in the flight deck on a C-130 flying from Islamabad to Gilgit. It was crystal clear and not a cloud in the sky. Being an aviation enthusiast this was really a dream come true to sit in the flight deck. I felt like a 10 year old the whole flight.

It was a spectacular flight and one I will remember for the rest of my life. The pilots were just amazing and I could tell they were enjoying themselves as well. It truly was amazing descending through the valley and the size of the mountains on both sides of the aircraft. They had been flying in and out of Gilgit for a couple of weeks and had some great stories.

A couple of days later I was on a C-17 flying into Skardu. Although I wasn't in the flight deck it was a pretty fun ride to the runway. I'm not in the military but had the opportunity to hitch a couple of rides.

Cheers

I'd say Værøy airport in Lofoten, Norway, is a pretty good candidate. It's not high altitude or surrounded by mountains or anything. It's on a small island on one of the outermost islands in the Lofoten chain in northern Norway. On one side is the ocean, on the other side is a steep hill, which makes for some VERY interesting downdrafts and constant turbulence on short final. This in an area of very rough weather on an almost daily basis. Widerøe used to fly Twotters there, as evidenced here:


Link to youtube vid. Stupendously huge scrotum made of hard metal required to try this approach




http://varoyrhs.com/lvb/images/juni2010/16.JPG

A friend of mine's landed there in a glider as bad weather prevented him from making it back to home field and it was getting too late to get from there to anywhere halfway landable. Still better than the basically unlandable fields in that area but still something I wouldn't recommend trying, especially in an engineless plane which means you only have one chance to get it right. :ouch:

This is the view you'd have:

Great video, really depends on the type of aircraft you're operating, Honduras in the 75 still looks the scariest, a Citation can go anywhere, no big deal.

Hmm... good clip but Samos Gr is much the same but with 30 kts across every day.

I'll still say that Aspen, Colardo (KASE) is very high on the list, if not at the top.

Bubbers44, I have flown in and out of there in a 727 back in the old days. However, I still believe that Aspen is worse. Why they didn't have Aspen on that Discovery program, I really never understood.

Now that I'm retired, if I never see Aspen again I'll be happy. But my wife loves the place, so I'm most likey to see it again anyway. :(

Of course now that I am retired and don't have to fly into ASE anymore, there is now an ILS into there with decent minmiums. Only certain aircraft, Gulfstreams, Falcon 50/900s, etc., are allowed to shoot the approach with special crew training.

Most difficult airfield is always the one I'm going to land on next. Rather treat it like that than becoming complacent.

FWIW this is Fane in the PNG highlands. It averages something like a 16deg slope and once you get to the top you have to stop or you run into the buildings.

http://www.billzilla.org/fane.jpg

Onongi, just down the road. Again, a one-way strip.

http://www.billzilla.org/ononge.jpg

There's another runway in PNG by the name of Kamuli, which is similar to Fane but it is curved and has a cliff going up on one side.

Innsbruck is my nr1, loved the circling approaches during foen...

Bah - As grandpa Simpson says "I've coughed up scarier stuff!" ;)

At least you can break off an approach to most of the above.

Megeve, France - once you turn onto final, you are utterly committed as it is surrounded on three sides by huge rock faces and slopes, and the runway slopes at 7% (I seem to remember). Even Courcheval would allow some degree of break-off with a skillful steep turn.

It used to be that you could could go in without a check if you fly a ULM, even a fast glass ship. Ironically the arrival was fine for me (once my pulse had slowed) - Getting back out was the problem - got socked in for three days.

I can't find a decent picture - best is this flight sim pic I found.
http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/attach...4&d=1309773757

Samos, Greece on a windy day can be really challenging.

B737 landing Samos SMI RWY 09 with text commentary - YouTube