TJSJ - TNCS
Luis Muñoz Marín Intl - Juancho E. Yrausquin
Saba is a small island in the Caribbean, which is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Check out its Wikipedia page, it has some interesting bits of info there.
Saba is going to be a special trip in the sim, due to the following:
- It has the shortest runway of any commercial airport in the world (994ft, or 302m).
- The TBM min landing runway does not fit in there, so this time we are switching over to the old but trustworthy Cessna C172R.
We take off from the beautiful island of Puerto Rico on a nice, hot sunny day:
We follow a GPS flight path to Saba, as it does not lie on any established airway. As you get closer to the island, you realise this is gonna be an interesting trip:
You will land at the base of a volcano. The runway is the shortest there is, and it is surrounded by cliffs. The Cessna, at full flaps, allows us to approach really slow, with an approach speed of 61kts. You really need to make sure you touch down as early as possible, so you have enough runway to stop.
I did touch down hard on this landing, but managed to stop without any issues. Don’t wanna fall off the cliff at the other side of the runway, you know what I’m saying?
As I park next to the terminal, I am amazed at the level of detail this airport has. I mean, look at the pic below, it even has the flags of the Netherlands next to the terminal!
The scenery is absolutely stunning. This is a destination I’d like to check out by myself one of these days. Perhaps flying myself there on a prop aircraft? 😱
