Any Landing You Can Walk Away From

Travel+Leisure posted an article about the 10 scariest runways in commercial flight today. I’ve landed at three of them … Reagan, JFK and Barra, Scotland (my favorite).

Have you ever landed on a beach? The airport on the tiny Outer Hebridean Island of Barra is actually a wide shallow bay onto which scheduled planes land, making it a curiosity in the world of aviation. Admittedly, the roughness of the landings is determined by how the tide goes out to sea. Locals, who are avid cockle pickers, steer clear of the vast swath of hardened sand when the wind sock is up—a sign that specially rigged Twin Otter propeller aircraft are incoming.