The World's Most Terrifying Airports

Sit tight and buckle up -- it's gonna be a bumpy ride

Many airports offer offer long, wide runways with little or no obstacles. These are what you might call sensibly designed airports. And then there are the others: airports surrounded by water and washed out by tides, or perched on a cliff's edge among the world's tallest mountains (see photo).

Grab your air-sickness bag — you may need it — as you click through the world's most dangerous airports.

• Matekane Air Strip, Lesotho

  
  The mountainous African country of Lesotho has a serious dearth of flat spaces. In trying to avoid bumpy terrain, engineers built Matekane's runway on one of the country's few flat spots — which happens to lie at an altitude of 7,500 feet and ends at the edge of a perilous 2,000-foot-high cliff. The short runway measures a mere 1,300 feet. Often this distance isn't long enough for pilots to get airborne, so they do, in fact, plunge off the cliff, then take flight as the plane drops. Yup — terrifying. 

• Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Netherlands Antilles

  Cliffs plunge toward the sea at both ends of Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport's 1,300-foot runway on the tiny Caribbean island of Saba. As if that doesn't pose enough of a landing challenge, steep hills also flank the airport, creating updrafts and downdrafts. To be sure, no large aircraft are allowed; the space is used strictly by smaller, turbo-prop planes. 

• Courchevel International Airport, France

  
  Perched atop a 6,588-foot-tall cliff amidst France's jagged Alps, Courchevel International Airport has earned a reputation as one of the world's most terrifying airports. The wind and snowy mountain weather create less-than-ideal landing conditions, as does a 1,700-foot-long runway that slants upward at a steep 18.5-percent grade. The situation is so potentially treacherous that pilots must obtain certification before being allowed to land at the airport.  

• Gustaf III Airport, St. Bart's

  
  Planes landing at Gustaf III Airport on the island of St. Bart's must do so on a short airstrip — in this case, one that ends directly on a beach typically filled with sunbathers. Besides that dangerous inconvenience, the airport is flanked by steep hills, adding difficulty to the descent. 

• Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal

  
  A key gateway to Mt. Everest, Tenzing-Hillary Airport is in a class by itself. Located some 9,000 feet above sea level, the airport's runway is a brief 1,500 feet long, with a 12-degree slope. To keep things interesting (or terrifying, depending on your perspective), there's a mountain at one end of the airstrip and a 3,200-foot drop at the other.

• Svalbard Airport, Norway

  
  Svalbard Airport ranks as the world's northernmost airport, and engineers designing the space used Norway's frigid conditions to their advantage, building it on a layer of permafrost. Alas, seasonal changes in temperature as well as overall warming in the region often cause the ground to shift and lead to the runway becoming uneven, forcing frequent maintenance and repaving.  

  
  

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