image via Lisa Town

When I first entered Gibralter as part of a trip through southern Spain last year, via double decker British style bus of course, the first thing I noticed was the fact that the main road in and out, just past the Spanish border, cut right through an airport runway. I know there’s not a whole lot of space there with all that water and a big rock in the way, but was that really the best planning solution? Of course, at the time, I kept thinking….no, that can’t really be the actual runway. Planes don’t go right on through the main public access road, right?

Well, as it turns out, they do and the runway even made it in this website showcasing “4 of the World’s Strangest Airport Runways” and with the accompanying pictures from the article below. Text from site:

“Gibraltar Airport’s single runway is one of very few in the world (and certainly the largest example) to intersect a public road. That’s correct: a public road. Operating similarly to a train crossing, traffic travelling along Winston Churchill Avenue in Gibraltar is brought to a halt each time a plane either lands or takes-off, causing the spectacle seen in the photos [below].”

Another interesting one is the Funchal Airport’s Extended Runway on the island of Medeira where the extended runway doubles as a covered vehicular parking garage. “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. The result is a unique, safe runway which now also houses a car park underneath its extension. The newly adapted runway also won the IABSE’s Outstanding Structure Award in 2004.”