Gibraltar, world’s only airport runway intersecting a road | Hacker News Reader

Gibraltar, world’s only airport runway intersecting a road

amusingplanet.com

159 pointsthunderbong114 comments

Ometepe, an island in Nicaragua also has this. There is virtually no traffic control either. You've just got to look both ways... and up, before you drive across it.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@11.5238261,-85.7012237,1228m/da...

I was about to comment exactly this!

I crossed both of them :)

The runway of the main airport on the Shetland Islands (Sumburgh Airport[0]) also crosses one of the main roads (A970[1]). Access is controlled by a level crossing with barriers closed whenever a flight is taking off or landing. If you hire a car at the airport you get to drive over the runway (when the barriers are open) which is an unusual experience.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumburgh_Airport

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A970_road

I wonder how often someone mistakenly or deliberately turns down the runway...?

It isn't like they can really have a kerb or a fence stopping you...

I would say it's near impossible to do accidentally. And If you did so deliberately it wouldn't be a major safety incident and you could expect some prison time or a large fine.

I've actually driven over this and didn't even remember it as you're so far from the airport buildings at that point. Unlike Gibraltar where it's actually rather busy https://maps.app.goo.gl/disXPcTEh3GMfwAF8

For decades Taiwan has designed sections of its highways to be converted to military runways in the event of an attack by China. Here's a review with photos of a training exercise a few years ago:

The [Taiwan] Air Force sent four types of aircraft to participate in the exercise: a F-16V Fighting Falcon, a Mirage 2000-5 multi-role fighter jet, and Taiwan’s own Indigenous Defense Fighter. The jets took off and landed with weapons onboard—the F-16 carried two Harpoon anti-ship missiles, two AMRAAM medium-range air-to-air missiles, and two AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range air-to-air missiles. The same jet or another jet later landed on the improvised airstrip, minus the two Harpoon missiles.

Surely other countries have similar provisions in place, considering some of the first military facilities to be taken out in the event of a surprise attack are military runways.

I was about to mention what I heard many years ago about 1 mile in every 5 of US highways having to be straight, so that in emergencies it could be used as a runway, but I decided to google it first for a reference and it turns out it's an urban legend: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/publicroads/00mayjun/o...

also some additional details here: https://science.howstuffworks.com/engineering/civil/were-u-s...

Man that totally sounds real. I’d someone told me that I would 100% believe it!

I'm sure there are enough straight stretches that it could be done anyway. Seems that the Swedes practice on their highways with their Gripens regularly:

* https://www.blogbeforeflight.net/2020/04/swaf-gripen-pilots-...

Grippens are designed to land on highways in Sweden.

And its predecessor Viggen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_37_Viggen

In Sweden you still come across widened roads that have aircraft landing markings on them. Marked Highway strip on this list.

https://www.mil-airfields.de/se/list.htm

A taxi driver in Singapore told me that the highway in Singapore is also designed for planes to land on. My own observations indicated that this was plausible.

If by highway he meant the section of the East Coast Parkway that is straight and wide (the median has potted plants rather than planted trees), my recollection is that this is a myth, that section of the highway may have been intended for planes to land on in an emergency, but no longer. Unfortunately I do not have sources.

But if by highway he meant Lim Chu Kang road, then it's not just plausible: Lim Chu Kang road is actually used as an extra airstrip. The RSAF conducts regular exercises to ensure it can still be used as such, the last one being about 5 years ago [0]. There is an interesting video from 2009 on the subject too [1].

[0] https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/planes-taking-over-li...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBMD4QTSyqM

Germany did the same during the cold war. Here is video of an exercise in 1988 (German commentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_cxkF6qSY8

Yeah, in the Czech Republic (or especially the former Czechoslovakia), part of the main D1 highway (Prague-Brno) is designed as an alternate airfield.

Here is a (then-classified) 1980 army documentary about a large exercise on the highway (using MiG-21 and MiG-23 planes): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDoZGoaG9_w (sorry, Czech only)

In Finland there are many roads that are extended and maintained as alternative "airfields", mainly for purposes of national defense but also as emergency landing sites for civilian craft

I wonder how they handle the support? It's not much use to land and take off warplanes if you can't also transport, load, and service weapons and also refuel the planes and fix any mechanical issues.

The town I grew up in, Gisborne New Zealand, had an airport that had a railway line crossing the runway. Perhaps unsurprisingly the trains had to give way to the planes.

https://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/08/gisborne-airport-runwa...

I find that surprising rather than unsurprising.

After all, a plane can easily do a no-fault turn-around and can observe the train in a collision path from up above while the same cannot be said for a train.

Gisborne had a population of about 30,000 at the time with just a handful of flights a day. I'm pretty sure as a pilot I wouldn't want to be looking out for incoming train traffic, especially in difficult weather conditions.

That may be sometimes/mostly (can pilots really spot a train in bad weather? is the train even visible from the air and not obscured by trees, buildings, in a tunnel?) true for planes landing, but not for planes taking off.

In Seattle, we built the light rail down the middle of a main roadway. The train has to stop for red lights to let cars through. It's so backwards, it's ridiculous. Always fun when the train driver notices it late and slams on the brakes.

Minneapolis built their light rail right down the middle of a main roadway, and the train does have to stop for red lights, but there is no train conductor because the train is wired into the stoplight system and slows down/stops/accelerates appropriately. The lights have also been re-timed to allow for the train. Works pretty well in my experience.

They've obviously learned from that experience. The new southwest light rail being built has a ridiculous number of bridges - it's going to rival Chicago's "L" when it opens in two years, at least as it goes through the suburbs.

> but there is no train conductor because the train is wired into the stoplight system and slows down/stops/accelerates appropriately.

???

If you literally mean a conductor, i.e. as per the Wikipedia "a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive" then yes, but then again that's nothing special as local public transport has mostly got rid of conductors for decades already and only a few systems still retain them (like apparently most older North American subway systems). Also it doesn't really have to do anything with how the traffic lights are wired or not.

If on the other hand you do in fact mean a driver, then that would very much surprise me, as automatic operation of light rail systems running in mixed street traffic is still very uncommon to non-existant (as compared to fully segregated subways and subway-like systems, where new systems are commonly automated and older systems are slowly and occasionally being converted to automatic operation), and a cursory search seems to indicate that Minneapolis is no different in that regard, i.e. the trains are in fact still driver-operated.

Light rail with no separation down main roads exists in a lot of places (including San Francisco) as the right of way is already available.

In Redwood City there's a freight line that runs down the middle of a residential street with zero grade separation or fencing or anything else. You can drive over it if there's no train on it. Unsurprisingly it's a poor neighborhood.

Also the Amtrak line right down Embarcadero in Oakland that runs right down the middle of the road in the traffic line. I often think of a certain scene in Inception when I see that.

Whereabouts in RWC? I checked along the rail route and couldn't find any crossing that wasn't grade-separated.

That’s interesting, I would’ve been concerned about what happens to the tires when a plane taking off/landing hits those tracks, but I guess it isn’t an issue.

They look small since they're next to big planes, but plane tires are actually quite big, so I'm not surprised they wouldn't have any trouble w/ the tracks.

I was more thinking about smaller GA planes, but it’s probably a similar situation. They’re designed to slam into the ground with a plane on top of them over and over again, so they’re probably more than strong enough.

Car tyres don’t have any issue (there’s plenty of car/rail crossings) so I can’t see why a plane’s would.

There’s a significant difference in the amount of force on a car tire vs the amount of force on a plane tire while it’s landing. But it’s undoubtedly designed for.

Seeing the headline, I thought that can't be right; there are plenty of airport runways built on overpasses over major highways.

The possibility of an at-grade crossing between a public road and an international airport runway was not even in the realm of imagination for me!

It severely limits traffic, both air and land. There will be a tunnel for cars opening later this year. It is another kind of road rage sitting 45 minutes in a car in a queue when some dick decides to land with his private jet.

This doesn't seem like that much of a burden to endure.

There are many many places in the USA where vehicular traffic must defer to rail traffic at level crossings. Which can easily occur more often than 30x per week (30 number is from the article).

At some crossings it's not unusual to have a slow moving freight train take 15 minutes or more. How long is the road crossed for each plane? I'd expect 5 or 10 minutes max for a takeoff, I can understand they would want more time for a landing?

It's Europe, so the burden is the mere awareness that rich people exist who haven't been taxed into oblivion.

> This doesn't seem like that much of a burden to endure.

The road in Gibraltar is a main thoroughfare and I believe the only way to get to the Spanish border. Imagine a rail crossing going through the 101 in SF.

Considering Gibraltar has a grand total of 34,000 residents, it’s more similar to a rail crossing splitting Palo Alto. Which is the case. Similarly, probably as many people a day use the Fremont drawbridge in Seattle, which yields to boat traffic. I think this class of example is why people would be surprised so few cars would sometimes block air traffic.

Also the 101 has traffic lights in SF, when the freeway turns into Van Ness. If Van Ness had a rail crossing, I’d expect cars to wait on trains.

There's much more traffic than the residents. A lot of people work but doesn't live in Gibraltar, a lot of tourists and loads of people crossing the border just to buy cheap cigarettes. There are usually queues outside every cigarette shop. It's complete chaos at the border and nothing like any rail crossing I've ever seen.

Gibraltar has seen as many as 12M yearly tourists in its prepandemic peak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Gibraltar

For comparison, New York used to get 66M yearly tourists https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/nyregion/nyc-tourism-covi...

A couple of weeks ago I had to stop at a train crossing, arrived just a few seconds late to beat the train. It was a very long train. Then I noticed it was slowing down. As it got within one car of passing the intersection it stopped completely. A guy jumped off and did some stuff, then jumped back on. And the train started moving again - in reverse! I wasn't timing how long I was stopped, but it seemed like forever.

Almost as bad as a different country claim stealing a portion of your country and claiming it as theirs?

Like Ceuta?

Not only is that a tu quoque fallacy but it also fails to take into account that both Ceuta and Melilla are integral parts of Spain and have been since the 16th century, centuries prior to Morocco's independence from France in 1956, whereas Gibraltar, being a British Overseas Territory, is not and never has been part of the United Kingdom.

From Spain's perspective that's a distinction without a difference.

If sometime in the past 300 years the British government had formally incorporated Gibraltar into the UK the way Hawaii is a part of the US or French Guiana is part of France, would Spain's complaints about British sovereignty over Gibraltar, and periodic attempts to regain the territory, be any less frequent? I think not.

As long as we are talking (de)colonization, the distinction makes all the difference.

The difference in the treatment of a land and its people as equals to the rest of the country's citizens and states is what makes Hawaiians regular Americans and Ceuties regular Spaniards, and what keeps Llanitos from being British _citizens_.

To answer your question: yeah, if Gibraltar was a self-sufficient state within the UK (instead of an -arguably- geo-strategic colony that is a tax haven according to the OECD) you likely wouldn't hear as many complaints about it.

Take for example the cession of Sardinia in the very same Treaty of Utrecht. You ever hear complaints about its sovereignty?

You're saying that Spain wants Gibraltar back because it wants to liberate the benighted residents of the rock, which of course isn't true. Spain might claim as such as part of its overall case for regaining the territory, but that's certainly not the main, secondary, or tertiary reason.

If Sardinia were not an island hundreds of miles away, but a large peninsula physically connected to Spain, yes Spain would very much actively try to regain the territory. (Probably much more of a priority than Gibraltar.)

Gibraltar has the same status in OECD as USA, Germany, and is not classified as a tax haven. The regulation is the same as in any EU country, which Gibraltar was for a long time.

https://www.gibraltar.gov.gi/press-releases/gibraltar-retain...

Spain ceded Gibraltar in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It wasn't stolen. Besides which, Spain isn't exactly innocent when it comes to "stealing a portion of a country and claiming it as theirs".

Fair enough, I was wrong so deserve the downvotes.

Very few European countries are innocent when it comes to taking land that wasn’t theirs.

> Very few European countries are innocent when it comes to taking land that wasn’t theirs.

Very few any countries are.

That wasn't the important part of the response to your post though, the important part is that it wasn't stolen or conquered.

Spain disputes that the land the airport is on was covered by the Treaty of Utrecht.

Gibraltar was ceded by treaty, and Spain has not one, but TWO exclaves along the Moroccan coast.

My understanding is it is legal for planes in Alaska to just land on a road. They have relatively few roads and many places are only accessible via plane, boat or some other alternative to cars (like dog sled) for at least part of the year. They have about six times as many pilots per capita as the rest of the US. Some of their little towns have amazingly minimal airport amenities and crudely constructed landing strips.

I sometimes post articles related to that but there seem to be relatively few good articles on that subject per se. Instead I end up posting articles sort of related, like where a small Alaskan community called everyone to show up with their vehicles to provide impromptu landing lights for a medical evacuation after dark when the lights were not working.

Video demonstration of merging into traffic after a gas station pit stop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgQIcK881es

That's a very specific "class" of aircraft. STOL. Short take off and landing. It's popular in the back country though.

Aren't all aircraft a specific class of aircraft?

Apart from UFOs

And in the case you have an aircraft not in that specific class and want to do it anyways...

Just strap some rockets to it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/JATO

there's kind of no FAA rule specifically outlawing planes landing anywhere. There are restaurants in the US in rural parts of the mainland where planes land on a road and taxi right up to the parking lot like they're a car.

the rules are mostly around the pilot being responsible for respecting local laws, property owners (no trespassing) and the pilot being responsible for the safety of those in the plane and the road.

Sometime around 1980 I flew to Portland in a Cessna 172 to visit my family. I landed at Troutdale because who wants to deal with the traffic at PDX?

I'd called my mom from my refueling stop to give her an ETA and where to meet me. She parked her car on the wrong side of the runway, but why would that stop anyone?

As I taxied to the tiedown, I heard on the radio "Cessna 543 Whiskey Zulu, go around, woman crossing the runway."

Every year friends launch their float planes from the International Airport in Whitehorse, Yukon.

All the float planes are out of the water for winter freeze up, put on trailers. So in spring when the ice is gone you get a friend to drive down the runway full speed towing the trailer and plane, then take off directly from the trailer - there are no wheels on the floats and taking them on/off is a pain and not worth it.

My friend said it's always a little scary trying to remember how to fly for the first time in 9 months while being pulled behind a pickup truck at full throttle and around 180km/h. Because it's not tied down, he said if you're not on it, the plane just falls off the back of the trailer onto the runway - not good.

There's essentially a couple of days in spring when all the float planes around town do it, and a lot of fun to watch on a runway that has daily international flights around the world.

I came here to say “that sounds made up”. Then I did a Google video search for “Whitehorse airplane take off truck” and found: https://youtu.be/r5GAZC1YoCo. Must be a long runway!

There are daily direct flights to/from Germany.

So yeah, it's a good sized runway.

Not only that but there is a huge rock cliff face (aka "The Rock") towering over the runway only perhaps 300m or so (?) to the side of the runway and water at both ends. Quite dramatic approach and landing compared to most airports that are typically in the middle of somewhere really flat.

That said I was mildly disappointed by gib - I thought it would be much more glamorous than it was considering its Mediterranean location and reputation for finance and gambling businesses. It kinda felt like Margate-in-the-med.

Gibraltar is pretty low key wahat comes to showing off money. Marbella, 100 km to Costa del Sol, is the European Miami where you will find Lambos, bodies and parties.

A tunnel is under construction: https://www.reachextra.com/gibraltar-airport-tunnel/

For the cars or the planes?

I lived next to the runway for about an year. I can actually seem the apartment from some of the photos. It was an interesting place.

It's really just after the border with Spain so if you stay in the country you don't need to cross it every day, but more people work in Gib than live so there is quite a good amount of traffic.

As with most things, you get used to it and it just becomes normal very quickly. The best thing was probably the fact that "I'll pick you up at the airport" is a 5 minutes affair rather than a few hour.

Another interesting sight of Gibraltar is the Sunborn Hotel, which is pretty much ship without motor that acts as hotel/casino.

Was it not super loud?

Not OP but there are only a handful of scheduled flights per day.

I used to fly into there fairly regularly as it was easier to get to my parent's place half an hour up the coast than if I flew to Malaga.

I also used to live in an apartment right next to it (white building with red roof on the left in second picture) and yes, it was loud. The first times it felt like an earthquake but I quickly got used to it and the view was worth it.

You felt it a bit if you left the windows open but I was never woken up in morning. Also, there were no night flights except for the occasional huge military plane.

Sunborn is relatively affordable too! I believe it claims 5 stars, which is overselling it, and the noise from the bars on the landward side isn't great but it's nice all the same

I got to stay there only once when an employer invited me over for an interview and it was indeed very cool!

I was surprised to see Arabic script in the last image (albeit in almost illegible scrawled script).

So it seems Gibraltar is an Anglicism of Jabal Tariq which means "Tariq's mountain" in Arabic.

Placencia Airport in Belize (PLJ) terminates exactly at a road. The short runway takes up the entire width of the isthmus it occupies, so the road takes a dog-leg to pass it. There's a single arm gate on each road to stop traffic during takeoffs and landings.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/search/placencia+belize+airport/...

Moffett Field in Mountain View has a road that crosses a taxiway and it doesn't even have gates like this one does, just a stop sign and a sign that says "yield to aircraft" which I always thought was excellent advice.

I only had to stop for a plane once. It was a flying observatory. OK I admit it: this wasn't an accidental meeting; I knew it would be flying and hung around so I would have a story.

Gibraltar airport is one of the toughest (civilian?) to land. Only Captains are allowed to land. Flights often get diverded to Malaga due to winds.

https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/696566/high-winds-...

The captain-only requirement is an interesting one. While it makes sense that you'd want the more experienced pilot doing the landing, how do you get more captains? I.e. if a First officer can't land there with a more senior pilot ready to advise/supervise/take over, it would mean each person's first time landing there is when there's no one else more experienced to advise.

Someone said elsewhere thst it id not a heavily used airport. If there are inly a handful of flights a day I imagine that means there are only a select number of airlines arriving. If you were one of the select few airlines landing here, i could imagine you'd br able to schedule an experienced captain to be with a first timer when landing.

note: i am only speculating, and have no ideas of rules that prohibit two captain level pilots flying at once.

The first time they might do it under the supervision of a check airman, or at least an experienced captain.

> Cars wait patiently as a Jumbo taxies on the runway at the Gibraltar Airport

They’re showing a picture of (I think) an A220? In what world is even an A320 a jumbo…

Pretty sure it's a 757, but that's not a jumbo jet either.

That's an A320-200 [0]. Look at the cockpit windows, they're often a good way to tell similar aircraft apart.

It also has two overwing exits, so it can't be an A319 (single) or A321 (none).

The engine size gives it away that it's a 200 and not a neo.

BA did operate 757s in their shorthaul fleet but only on busy routes like ARN - LHR, I don't think there would be enough traffic to have justified it on any Gibraltar - UK route.

[0] https://www.britishairways.com/en-de/information/about-ba/fl...

The flights are usually pretty full as there are only a handful a day.

But I've only ever been on an A320 or a 737 when flying there, not sure if a 757 would be able to take off and land safely - it's a pretty short runway.

I visited (from the US) some years back when I was briefly living in Spain. We bused to La Linea (the Spanish border town), then walked across the border, then across the runway (after waiting for a plane), to get the main, touristy part of Gibraltar. Just added to the surreality of visiting such a visibly-known place.

Pic: https://flickr.com/photos/incanus/2428326403/in/album-721576...

Other people have pointed out that there are more of these, but I should note that there's a list of more of these here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossing#Runway_crossing...

It seems to lack the Ometepe and Nauru examples people have mentioned though... but it is Wikipedia, so one can add those. :)

Edit: Although I'm not sure the Nauru example is real...

Surely this gem hasn't gone unfilmed in some sort of James Bond type action sequence?

The Living Daylights starts with the Gibraltar scene. Ian Flemmings, the author, was stationed at Gib during WW2.

With the runway?

I don't recall seeing it. There's a plane, and parachuting from the plane, but I don't recall that you ever see the runway.

It would be a funny twist on the train to get across the train tracks before the train comes trope.

Totally almost off subject but if you want some cool Gibraltar movie action check out Das Boot. And I watched Dunkirk right after if you really want to sob about the meaninglessness of war. The ending of Das Boot transitions well into the story of Dunkirk, in my opinion. And the ending of Dunkirk is one of the nobly beautiful things I've seen.

A similarly strange runway is located at Barra Airport in scotland: it's made of sand, and tide covers it up twice a day.

Here's a Tom Scott video about it:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=g_2SlqF0kA0

It used to have an overhang with a net at one end. I found that slightly disconcerting.

Zadar Airport in Croatia had the runway intersecting road up until 2010. It is fairly busy airport during summer season. The road was closed as a part of aligning road safety policies during EU negotiations

[1.] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadar_Airport#History

[2.] https://www.jutarnji.hr/vijesti/hrvatska/zatvorena-cesta-zad...

Nauru's airport also crosses a road.

https://wikitravel.org/en/Nauru

Does it actually? Looking at pictures and maps, I don't see any crossings between the runway and the road. There's an intersection, but it's not a crossing; it'd only be useful for a plane going onto or off of the runway, not a car passing through.

Kinda: the round-island road goes between the airport terminal and the runway, meaning traffic needs to be stopped whenever planes are taxiing to/from the runway. You can see it here:

https://youtu.be/fK74uRoIqXg?t=502

Google Maps link:

https://goo.gl/maps/rr7AYHFqnJCdW9tx7

There are quite a few examples in this thread that show there are other runways intersecting a road. To the most interesting to me is the Meiringen military airport, in Switzerland. Plane spotters are often seen at the level crossing taking photos of the landing F18s. There is even a small parking conveniently located near the same level crossing.

It's also in the top 5 most dangerous airports to land at - lots of sudden crosswinds from the rock.

You also have the fun of the Levante, which is a sea mist that can come in very quickly and hang around for hours. I've been delayed multiple hours on more than one occasion waiting for it to clear.

Fort Lauderdale resolved this by running one of the roads over the other.

https://www.enr.com/articles/37614-south-runway-project-lift...

Out of the two ways you arrange one over the other, I suppose only one makes sense.

Paris Charles de Gaulle airport has this too. It's fun when you're in the airplane and it crosses the bridge.

Sydney airport does this too, with a motorway running under the main runway.

In Pakistan, the Peshawar airport has a railway line crossing through the airport runway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEBgVEYjSq8

Recent and related:

On the Rock of Gibraltar - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27756373 - July 2021 (24 comments)

There are plenty of places where the runway is the road

I would be seriously worried about something falling off a car that the plane hits during takeoff

Not just cars, since it's a busy pedestrian crossing too. They actually run a street cleaner (well, I suppose a street cleaner/runway cleaner combo machine) each time after it's closed to car and foot traffic before a plane crosses it.

Important to note is that a tunnel is in progress and should be completed soon :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com