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Here are 20 of the most unusual and dangerous airport runways around the world
From runways you can drive across to weird and wonderful airport locations, here are 20 examples of out-there runways.
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Genova Cristoforo Colombo international airport balances on an artificial peninsula west of the city centre. The airport opened in 1962 after an eight-year construction period with a terminal building added in 1986.
Board a flight to the Ligurian capital and you’ll have an incredible landing where it seems the plane is going to touch down on water — until the runway appears under the wheels at the very last moment.
The Genoese constructed an artificial peninsula in the Mediterranean to fit an airport into their notoriously crowded, mountainous city. (izanbar/iStockphoto/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport has the shortest runway in the world, measured at just 400 metres long.
Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport during the Dutch Royal Family tour of the Dutch Caribbean Islands on February 9, 2023 in Saba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba. (Patrick van Katwijk/WireImage)
This is the only place in the world where the runway is on the beach itself.
Just one flight route operates here: Loganair’s 225-kilometre connection with Glasgow, using 19-seater de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter aircraft. Pilots heading to 13-kilometre-long Barra must line up and touch down on Traigh Mhòr, a wide bay in the north of the island, landing straight onto the sand.
Passengers walk across the beach to the terminal on the other side of the dunes, then get a last bit of sand underfoot as they board the aircraft for the flight back to the mainland.
Scotland's Barra Airport, in the Outer Hebrides, is little more than a beach doubling as a runway. (georgeclerk/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Gibraltar’s runway also doubles as a road into town, so you can cross it by scooter, bike, or on foot once you land, waving off the airplane that just deposited you there. Police man the crossing, barring the way when the red light goes on to denote a plane taking off or landing.
Numerous people cross the tarmac with the runway from the airport on foot on their way across the border from Spain to Gibraltar, Sept. 19, 2025. (Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Majuro’s Amata Kabua International Airport’s single runway, just shy of 2,500 metres, is a slim strip of asphalt over the sandbar that’s barely any wider than the atoll itself.
Fly into Majuro and you'll skim across the Pacific and land on the runway that's just about as wide as the sandbar-like island itself. (mtcurado/iStockphoto/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
An aeroplane of the Royal Bhutan Airline Drukair on arrival at Paro Airport, one of the most dangerous airports in the world on November 18, 2012, in Paro near Thimphu, Bhutan. (EyesWideOpen/Getty Images)
The main airport of St. Maarten is so close to the beach, flights coming in are roughly 30 metres from beachgoers.
Commercial Jet Blue airliner flying low over Maho Beach on final approach to the Princess Juliana International Airport on the Caribbean Island of Sint Maarten. (Ron Buskirk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The airfield at an altitude of 2,007 metres is considered a particularly difficult landing site with its sloping runway, which is only 538 metres long.
View of the Courchevel airfield, also called Altiport, on Feb. 13, 2023, in France. (Michael Kappeler/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Svalbard airport is the world’s most northly commercial airport that sits on permafrost.
View of Longyearbyen airport, located on Spitsbergen island, in Svalbard Archipelago, northern Norway, May 6, 2022. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)
The main airport for Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto, is not only on a manmade island, but it sits just shy of three miles off the coast, in water around 18 metres deep.
Kansai International Airport straddles two manmade islands five kilometres off the coast of Japan, and has a terminal designed by Renzo Piano. (The Asahi Shimbun/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Slicing across the southwest coast of the island, Nauru International Airport’s runway has residential streets backed up against it, while the coastal road that loops the island does an extra celebratory ring around the airport itself. While the road doesn’t go on the runway itself, it crosses each end, meaning traffic is stopped for landings and take-offs — giving drivers prime views.
Nauru's airport runway slices through a part of the main town. (mtcurado/iStockphoto/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
The ancient Viking-era ruins, called one of the U.K.’s greatest archeological sites, sit just beyond one of the runways of Sumburgh, Shetland’s main airport — and reaching them means driving, cycling or walking across the runway itself.
The road south from Lerwick cuts across the runway of Sumburgh Airport on Shetland. (Alan Morris/iStock Editorial/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Sprawling over Hulhulé, an island close to the capital Malé, it’s essentially just a single runway, surrounded by the turquoise sea.
Velana International Airport in the Maldives doesn't just have a regular runway; it also has four water runways for seaplanes. (Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Bora Bora Airport was constructed during the second World War on a motu, or island in a lagoon, meaning that to get anywhere else in Bora Bora you need to take a boat from the baggage claim.
At Bora Bora airport you'll land on a thin motu (island) in a lagoon and take a boat from baggage claim. (dpa/imageBROKER/picture alliance/Sipa USA via CNN Newsource)
For the busiest cargo airport in the world, you need space. Luckily, Hong Kong created an entire island for its airport which, when it opened, had the world’s largest passenger terminal, too.
In Hong Kong, the islet of Chek Lap Kok was massively extended to create an island big enough to house a major international airport. (d3sign/Moment RF/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Don Mueang International Airport has an 18-hole golf course between its two runways. If you’re nervous from a safety point of view, don’t be — players at the Kantarat course must go through airport-style security before they hit the grass.
An 18-hole golf course sits between the two runways at Bangkok's Don Mueang International Airport. (MJ_Prototype/iStock Editorial/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
Chubu is based near the city of Nagoya, an industrial hub that’s home to major car manufacturers, who needed easy and close cargo shipping. The five-year construction involved using ‘sand compaction piles’ driven into the seabed by specialist ships to stabilize the surface.
Chubu Centrair International Airport was opened in 2005 on an artificial island off the industrial city of Nagoya. (Taro Hama/Moment Unreleased RF/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)
This gateway to the Everest region, the Lukla airport strip sits on a mountainside at an altitude of 2,800 metres, and the runway is 527 metres long. It is considered one of the most dangerous runways in the world
A private aircraft prepares to land at the Tenzing-Hillary airport in Lukla on April 23, 2021. (Photo by Prakash MATHEMA / AFP via Getty Images)
Landing at Madeira airport is tricky due to mountainous terrain, and a runway extension was built on columns extending into the Atlantic Ocean.
General view of the airport after the ceremony at Madeira Airport to rename it Cristiano Ronaldo Airport on March 29, 2017 in Santa Cruz, Madeira, Portugal. (Octavio Passos/Getty Images)
The Kuebunyane Airport runway strip is Lesotho is used by many aid organizations, providing access to remote regions. The end of the airstrip goes off the edge of a cliff.
(Grant Strugnell / Mission Aviation Fellowship)