funshall airport on the island of
madeira is one of the most difficult
places in europe to land a commercial
plane it wasn't easy to build a runway
here back in the 1960s madeira is
basically one huge mountain just
sticking out of the atlantic ocean there
isn't any part of this island flat
enough for long enough that it can
support a runway but with a lot of earth
moving it was possible for them to build
one short runway enough for the
relatively lightweight aircraft of the
day
and then european tourism and the
package holiday boom started and planes
kept getting bigger the runway was
extended another 200 meters in the 70s
but it still wasn't enough there was
nowhere to extend two there was another
bit of cliff a few hundred meters to the
east that could technically be flattened
but between there and the existing
runway
there was nothing but air the only
option was to build a bridge big enough
wide enough and strong enough somehow to
handle a fully loaded airliner landing
on it basically to put most of a runway
up on stilts
so that's what
it's only when you get underneath the
runway and stand up close that you
realize the sheer scale of this it's
unlike any other space i've ever been in
there's a whole boat yard under here a
go-kart track the noise you can hear is
industry there's more than 30 meters
between each of these pillars the
tallest ones are more than 50 meters
high just the base of each pillar is
taller than i am the foundations go far
down into the ground this whole area had
to be flattened and stabilized so it
could stand
a runway on stilts shouldn't make a
landing more difficult a runway is a
runway right the difficulty comes from
what's around and under it the mountains
cause fast gusting winds and the
approach path has a late low turn that
requires special training and pilots
aren't even allowed to start that
training until they've had 200 hours
flying the type of aircraft they'll be
landing here in the airport
documentation there's a line that says
pilots should watch the wind indicators
on the runway because occasionally they
will indicate wind from opposite
directions
to be clear
this is safe there hasn't been an
incident on this runway in nearly half a
century for most passengers this is just
a normal landing at a normal airport or
at worst a bit of a bumpy turbulent
landing and the reason for that is a lot
of pilot training and some very big
civil engineering
complexity
importance
foreign
let's remind you that this is