Courchevel, France
When presented with the aeronautical
oddity that is the airport of Courchevel in the
French Alps, you might fi rst ask: “Why would
anyone build such an insane airstrip there?”
The answer, of course, is: “Because we can.”
Nestled deep in the mountains, it is prone
to poor weather: low ceilings, high winds,
extreme turbulence, icing, contaminated
runways and whiteout conditions that can
conspire to make operations diffi cult. The
severely sloped and short runway only
exacerbates the challenges. If you are going
there, I’d recommend taking advice from
the professionals that used to shoehorn the
relatively large de Havilland Canada DHC-7
in and out regularly (see P56). In its day,
the 50-seat Dash 7 was the master of short
take-off and landing (STOL) operations and
was well suited to its conditions.Into the Alps on a PC
The only way in and out of Courchevel is
under visual fl ight conditions. Its unique
runway ends in a vertical snow cliff that is
part of a much larger chunk of mountain.
When I queried Captain Stolle [quite an
apt name – Ed], a Tyrolean Airlines Dash 7
pilot, about the possibility of a go-around
he stated equivocally: “Once you pass the
lowest point of the valley, which is quite a
distance from the runway, there is no way
to go-around due to the sloping terrain.
You will smash right into the mountain.”
All pilots are used to fl ying 3o approaches
to level runways, but when the airstrip
seems to be a vertical wall of pavement the
tendency is to try to make it appear lessPC FLIGHT SIMULATORS
Lockheed Martin P3D http://www.prepar3d.com
Microsoft Flight Simulator X store.steampowered.com/app/314160/
Laminar Research X-Plane http://www.x-plane.comFLIGHT SIMULATION
Extreme Airports // 95RIGHT: The Alpine
scenary around
Courchevel can
be faithfully
reproduced for
PC pilots.
BELOW RIGHT:
Final approach
to Runway 23 at
Courchevel in a de
Havilland Canada
Dash 7. Even the
ski li s have been
included in the
add-on scenary.94-98_Flight Sim.indd 95 11/05/2018 15:54