Pratique du shadowing : Europe's toughest airport landing used to be a lot harder
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- Funschal Airport on the island of Madeira is one of the most difficult places in Europe to land a commercial plane.0:00
- It wasn't easy to build a runway here back in the 1960s.0:05
- Madeira is basically one huge mountain just sticking out of the Atlantic Ocean.0:08
- There isn't any part of this island flat enough for long enough that it can support a runway.0:12
- But with a lot of earth moving it was possible for them to build one short runway.0:16
- Enough for the relatively lightweight aircraft of the day.0:20
- And then European tourism and the package holiday boom started and planes kept getting bigger.0:23
- The runway was extended another 200 meters in the 70s but it still wasn't enough.0:29
- There was nowhere to extend to.0:33
- There was another bit of cliff a few hundred meters to the east that could technically be flattened.0:35
- But between there and the existing runway there was nothing but air.0:39
- The only option was to build a bridge.0:43
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- Big enough, wide enough and strong enough somehow to handle a fully loaded airliner landing on it.0:45
- Basically to put most of a runway up on stilts.0:51
- So that's what they did.0:55
- I came to Madeira in 1995 to build this work.0:57
- It was one of the 40 engineers who worked here at the same time.1:02
- The last engineer came here.1:05
- So I was here approximately nine years old.1:07
- At the end I went straight to the project.1:10
- The idea was to build this structure in a very armed way.1:13
- That increased more than a thousand meters on the runway.1:17
- The existing runway was a high runway.1:20
- It had a higher cut to the ground where the runway could be extended.1:24
- So what we had to do was to build a gigantic structure here in terms of land.1:29
- That couldn't be built on material.1:34
- The pillars are all the same.1:37
- The slabs are all the same.1:38
- The beams are all the same.1:40
- So what are the great challenges?1:41
- It's exactly the first time.1:44
- To make the first pillar, the first beam, the first beam.1:47
- And from there, we could maintain a final discussion.1:51
- It's only when you get underneath the runway and stand up close that you realise the sheer scale of this.1:56
- It's unlike any other space I've ever been in.2:01
- There's a whole boat yard under here, a go -kart track.2:03
- The noise you can hear is industry.2:05
- There's more than 30 meters between each of these pillars.2:07
- The tallest ones are more than 50 meters high.2:10
- Just the base of each pillar is taller than I am.2:12
- The foundations go far down into the ground.2:15
- This whole area had to be flattened and stabilised.2:17
- So it could stand up to the weight.2:20
- On its own, a runway on stilts shouldn't make a landing more difficult.3:01
- A runway is a runway, right?3:05
- The difficulty comes from what's around and under it.3:07
- The mountains cause fast, gusting winds.3:10
- And the approach path has a late, low turn that requires special training.3:12
- 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.3:16
- In the airport documentation, there's a line that says pilots should watch the wind indicators on the runway.3:22
- Because occasionally, they will indicate wind from opposite directions.3:27
- To be clear, this is safe.3:31
- There hasn't been an incident on this runway in nearly half a century.3:33
- For most passengers, this is just a normal landing at a normal airport.3:36
- Or at worst, a bit of a bumpy, turbulent landing.3:40
- And the reason for that is a lot of pilot training.3:42
- And some very big civil engineering.3:45
Mesuré dans ce clip
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- 218 mots par minute — plus rapide que 75% du catalogue
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- Mots à connaître
- stabilised, airliner, slabs, gusting, madeira, stilts
