Honduras: World’s Trickiest Landing
A night landing on the moving deck of an aircraft carrier has always
been regarded as the most difficult landing approach for aviators. We
think the Toncontín Airport in Honduras might actually beat that.
Toncontín International Airport, located 6 km (3.72 miles) from downtown
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, has long been considered to be one of the most
difficult, dangerous landings for any large commercial airliner thanks
in part to its unusual mountainous location. Add to that an extremely
short runway (runway 02), one of the world's shortest, that's merely
6,112 feet in length (LAX features roughly 3,000 additional feet for
large aircraft) and you've got a recipe for armrest-death-gripping,
butt-clenching, nervous excitement.
To be more accurate, the actual landing distance of runway 02 is only
5442 feet with an approach that requires pilots to utilize everything
their training didn't prepare them for. The mountainous terrain
surrounding the small airport forces an approach that's anything but
head on, resulting in a fast decent and a sharp turn prior to lining up
with the runway. Frequent gusts of wind complicate matters even further,
requiring quick yaw adjustments to the vertical stabilizer's rudder,
pitch adjustments to the horizontal stabilizer's elevators and roll
adjustments to the wing's ailerons in order to angle the aircraft for a
sane final approach.
The largest aircraft allowed to land at Toncontín are Boeing 757s, but
there have been times when larger aircraft have landed, such as a DC-8
passenger airliner and this U.S. Air Force Boeing (McDonnell Douglas)
C-17 Globemaster III. We're sure military pilots are much better suited
for tricky landings than their commercial counterparts, but anyone
attempting to delicately drop a (roughly) 115 ton bird out of the sky
has bigger gonads than us.
Not every pilot that's challenged Toncontín International Airport's
tricky setup has lived to tell the tale. The latest, on May 30, 2008,
involved an Airbus A320, approaching from San Salvador, that came in a
bit too hot and overran the runway resulting in 5 casualties.
FEATURES:
Custom Ground Textures
Custom Photo Scenery (All Tegucigalpa city included)
Custom mesh
Hand placed Autogen
Basilica de Suyapa
Cristo del Picacho
Monumento a la Paz
Carefully detailed 3d objects
Full detail Buildings
Realistic Ground Markings
Numerous static objects
Fencing
AFCAD
Realistic ground textures
Night ilumination
Volumetric Grass
FPS friendly
Charts included
If you want to download (Click link download in down)
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