David Eaves at Private Jet Charter has compiled this great selection of some of the most bizarre airport runways around the world.

How many of them have you travelled to? Are they as crazy in an aircraft as they look from the outside?

1. Funchal Airport’s Extended Runway

Above: When engineers were looking for a viable way to extend Funchal Airport’s dangerously brief runway, they cleverly opted to ‘rest’ the enormous structure on 180 pillars, each measuring 230ft, rather than using landfill to support the strip. – more info.

2. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport runway

Image Source

Above: This is the only airport on the Caribbean island of Saba and because it is so short it is extremely difficult for even very experienced pilots to land on. – more info.

3. Princess Juliana International Airport runway

Above: The beach pictured can be found on the island of Saint Martin in the Caribbean and is unfortunately located directly underneath the landing path of planes approaching the airport runway.

4. Gibraltar Airport’s Runway

Image source

Above: This airport runway located in Gibraltar is one of the only airport runways to intersect a public road. The runway operates similarly to a train crossing so traffic is put on hold whilst planes take off.

5. Don Mueang International Airport Runway

Above: The bizarre thing about the runways at this Bangkok airport is that there is about this an 18 hole golf course situated between the two different runways.

6. Courchevel Airport Runway

Above: Courchevel Airport is a French airport that serves Courchevel, which is located in a ski area in the French Alps mountain. The airport has a very short runway of only 525 m (1,722 ft) with gradient of 18.5%. – more info.

7. Kobe Airport Runway

Above: The picture above is of one of Japan’s custom made runways on an artificial island just off the coast of Kobe which can be seen on Google maps. More info can be found on Wikipedia.

Flying a fleet of seven Boeing 717 aircraft, sourced second-hand from the manufacturer, Volotea is positioning itself to serve small- and mid-sized cities across Europe initially from bases in Venice Marco Polo (Italy), Nantes (France), and Ibiza (Spain).

The airline is run by former founding members of Vueling Airlines, and has its corporate headquarters in Barcelona.

Volotea’s first flight took off on 5th April from Venice, bound for Palermo – one of the 76 routes announced by the airline, and one of a number of domestic routes within Italy – set to challenge the dominance of Alitalia and Ryanair in this much sought-after market.

In fact, Venice Marco Polo will clearly be the bigger base initially, with 24 routes planned.

The airline will not initially venture as far north as the UK, Ireland or Scandinavia, choosing to focus on Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Portugal, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Poland.

The choice of Boeing 717 is interesting for a low-cost airline, but is likely due to the cheap prices of sourcing them, and the regard with which they’ve been held in Spain over the past ten years. Nevertheless, for the enthusiast, this offers another chance to fly on the relatively rare type in Boeing’s stable (Blue1 is currently the only other European operator of the type).

All going well, the airline is likely to expand into other territories fairly soon, but I also suspect some routes will be non-starters, and others will see frequency changes. For a full list of planned routes, see Volotea’s homepage http://www.volotea.com/en/destinations/

I often come across fantastic videos of airport action on the web. These are often from popular spotting locations at different airports around the world, and in many cases show some extreme landings, takeoffs, weather or unusual aircraft.

This video is from AviationChannel2010′s collection and shows some windy landings at Funchal Airport on Madeira, including light aircraft,  commuters, and big airliners. It even has a go-around.