Top 10 Scariest Airports in the World

Jets blast over Maho Beach at 30 feet altitude, turning sunbathers into unwilling participants in an aviation experience that has its own dedicated webcam audience.

Only eight pilots in the world are certified to land here, threading between 18,000-foot Himalayan peaks through a valley so narrow that only visual approaches are permitted.

A runway extended on stilts over the Atlantic Ocean with crosswinds so severe that YouTube compilations of aborted landings here have millions of views.

A 525-meter runway with an 18.5% gradient on a mountainside, no instrument approaches, and featured in a James Bond film for a reason — it looks genuinely impossible.

A mountainous approach requiring a sharp 45-degree turn just before touchdown in a valley surrounded by terrain that gives air traffic controllers nightmares.

The only airport in the world where a four-lane highway crosses the active runway, stopping traffic with barriers every time a plane lands or takes off.

The only airport where scheduled flights land on a beach, with the runway disappearing entirely at high tide — flight times literally depend on the moon.

Arctic fog, fjord-channeled crosswinds, and an approach over an active glacier calving icebergs into the flight path make this the most remote terror in commercial aviation.

Though closed since 1998, the legendary checkerboard approach through Kowloon's skyscrapers with a last-second 47-degree turn remains the gold standard of terrifying landings in aviation history.