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At Least The Juana Azurduy Airport Has a Paved Runway

We're still adding to our list of the world's most dangerous airports. Know a stomach dropping, palm sweat inducing airport we should check out? Send it along.

It's been a while since we updated our World's Most Dangerous Airports list but thanks to a Jaunted tipster, we have learned of yet another scary airport to seek out/avoid. It's Juana Azurduy (SRE) in Sucre, Bolivia.

I flew in once (this was 1993, I spent a summer in that part of the world). It's like a lot of other airports - hot and high (about 9000 feet above MSL), in a natural bowl of mountains. The really nasty trick is that just at the end of the runway there is a small hill: incoming aircraft descend, then have to pull up sharply, then drop again to hit the end of the runway.

What makes matters worse is that there is no taxiway, so having gone past the terminal building the aircraft apparently starts to leave the runway altogether to the right before making a turn in its own length and taxiing back up to the terminal. Very unnerving if you haven't done it before!

You can see a great shot of the airport here on Airliners.net. On the bright side, the airport's runway is paved--something that you don't always get in this part of the world. And while the landing can be freaky, the airport is only open from sunrise to sunset so there can be no attempts to maneuver the descent in the dark. Phew!

Related Stories:
· Juana Azurduy de Padilla International Airport [Wikipedia]
· World's Most Dangerous Airports [Jaunted]

[Photo: tesking]