Saturday, June 1, 2013

#824 Pasto Airport, Colombia

Antonio Narino Airport near Pasto, Colombia is one of the most exciting I've ever landed in, and I landed this morning a bit unawares...

I saw a photo of this airport when I first arrived into Colombia and said, "One day, I'll go there..." and then promptly forgot where it was. As we came into land, I had an inkling, but it wasn't until I looked online later that the two places matched.

Why is it such a cool airport? It is on the edge of a cliff on three sides. There is a volcano directly ahead, and the runway drops off down a deep gully. Great!

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to get a good photo of the place -- here are some photos I found online. Apologies that I haven't sourced them because I pulled them off my Ipad so forgot where they each came from. If you do a search online, there's an amazing video of a plane coming in to land. It's a really exciting region geologically, and it's a 45 minute drive to Pasto itself -- this was the only area of flat land anywhere nearby, and it's really not that flat -- no runway misses allowed here!

This photo is mine -- see the enormous Galeras Volcano behind the runway -- Colombia's most active.
Another of my photos. The area around the airport -- the land is the only (partially) flat land for miles!

See this great video of coming in to land!

No comments:

Post a Comment