The St Barths Airport

I know this appears to be becoming a plane-spotters guide to interesting airport experiences, but this one is mad.

St Barths has this little airport. You can see it in the top picture. To land there, the plans have to fly over a mountain ridge. They then have to go into a nose down dive, pulling out at the last minute to hit the runway. It's not so evident from the photo, but that grassy bit leading up to the threshold is quite a steep decline ending at the runway's start.

There's a cross and a windsock on the hill above - strikes me as an apposite combination!

Most planes still land around 1/3 of the way down the runway. But, it's such a challenging approach, I think it is a real test of skill for pilots, so I suspect they come here from all around the place to have a crack. In fact, if you look really closely you can see a whole bunch of tire marks RIGHT ON THE END of the runway.

The photos don't do it justice, but to hit this point you have to be completely mad and extremely skilled. You see, you would have to time your decent perfectly to run down the hill - nose down and fast - then pull up right at the perfect moment.

Look at the final picture. I took that standing at the top of the hill! How often can you look DOWN on a landing plane? This guy touched down around 1/3 of the way down the runway, so you can see how insane landing on the end is!

It's just wrong. Take the ferry.