O
ver the last three years, the team behind
Airports of the World magazine has produced
three successful volumes of Great Airports of
the World. When we came to consider compiling a
fourth edition at the beginning of this year, questions
started to be asked about how many more truly
‘great airports’ were out there. Critically, were
there enough to justify another 100 pages? We
concluded the answer was probably ‘no’, along with
a recognition that something diff erent was needed.
The result of our deliberations is this, the fi rst-ever
Extreme Airports.
The question that undoubtedly comes to mind
now is: What is an extreme airport? We thought
about that very carefully and, of course, there were
some facilities that sprang to mind immediately- Lukla on the side of a mountain in Nepal, which
is frequently described as the world’s most
dangerous airport. Then there was Courchevel in
the Alps, and Barra’s beach runway in Scotland’s
Outer Hebrides. Some of the world’s most famous
extreme airports were put into the mix – Sint
Maarten and its neighbours Saint Barthélemy
and Saba in the Caribbean, plus Tegucigalpa
in Honduras. And it’s now 20 years since Hong
Kong’s much-loved Kai Tak – arguably the most
extreme of them all – closed for good. To mark the
anniversary, it was impossible to ignore the famous
cranked approach, where jumbo’s winglets seemed
to come close to dragging washing off lines and
passengers could watch TV through the windows of
apartments! It wasn’t quite like that, but it certainly
appeared that way to fi rst-time visitors.
As the plans progressed, it became apparent
that Extreme Airports shouldn’t just consider the
obvious candidates. It also needed to include the
busiest, the coldest and the downright unusual.
Atlanta has more than 100m travellers passingEDITORIAL
Editor: Andrew Martin
Email: [email protected]
Contributing Editors: Barry Woods-Turner,
Tom Allett, Craig West, James Ronayne
Correspondents: Luigi Vallero (Italy),
Sebastian Schmitz (Germany)
Production Editor: Sue Blunt
Deputy Production Editor: Carol Randall
Sub Editors: Norman Wells, Paul Watson
Designer: Tracey Croft
Chief Designer: Steve Donovan
Group Marketing Manager: Martin Steele
Marketing Manager: Shaun Binnington
Mail Order: Liz Ward, Joan Harwin, Scott Chiverton
ADVERTISING
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PUBLISHING/ DISTRIBUTION
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without prior notice and are freely available from
Key Publishing Ltd or downloadable from
http://www.keypublishing.comThe entire contents of Extreme Airports is © copyright,
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