Don Mueang International Airport, Thailand (DMK)
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Are you an avgeek with a mean handicap? Then it’s time to tee off in Bangkok, where Don Mueang International Airport has an 18-hole golf course between its two runways. If you’re nervous from a safety point of view, don’t be — players at the Kantarat course must go through airport-style security before they hit the grass. Oh, you meant safety on the course? Just beware of those flying balls, because there are no barriers between the course and the runways. Players are, at least, shown a red light when a plane is coming in to land so don’t get too distracted by the game.
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Although Suvarnabhumi (BKK) is Bangkok’s main airport these days — it opened in 2006 —Don Mueang, which started out as a Royal Thai Air Force base in 1914, remains Bangkok’s budget airline hub, with brands including Thai Air Asia and Thai Lion Air using it as their base. Although you’re more likely to see narrowbodies these days, you may just get lucky — in 2022, an Emirates A380 made an emergency landing here. Imagine the views from the course that day.
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Sumburgh Airport, Scotland (LSI)
The road south from Lerwick cuts across the runway of Sumburgh Airport on Shetland.
The road south from Lerwick cuts across the runway of Sumburgh Airport on Shetland. Alan Morris/iStock Editorial/Getty Images
Planning a trip to Jarlshof, the extraordinarily well-preserved Bronze Age settlement towards the southern tip of Shetland? You may need to build in some extra time. The ancient and Viking-era ruins, called one of the UK’s greatest archaeological sites, sit just beyond one of the runways of Sumburgh, Shetland’s main airport — and reaching them means driving, cycling or walking across the runway itself.
There’s only one road heading due south from the capital, Lerwick; and while it ducks around most of the airport’s perimeter, skirting the two runways, the road cuts directly across the western end of one of them. A staff member occupies a roadside hut, and before take-offs and landings, comes out to lower a barrier across the road. Once the plane is where it needs to be, up come the barriers and waiting drivers get a friendly thumbs up.
Amata Kabua International Airport, Marshall Islands (MAJ)
Fly into Majuro and you'll skim across the Pacific and land on the runway that's just about as wide as the sandbar-like island itself.
Fly into Majuro and you'll skim across the Pacific and land on the runway that's just about as wide as the sandbar-like island itself. mtcurado/iStockphoto/Getty Images
Imagine flying into Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia. You’re descending down, down, and further down towards the Pacific, no land in sight. Then you’re suddenly above a pencil-thin atoll — can you really be about to land here? Yes you are, with cars racing past the runway no less, matching you for speed.
Majuro’s Amata Kabua International Airport gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “water landing”. Its single runway, just shy of 8,000ft, is a slim strip of asphalt over the sandbar that’s barely any wider than the atoll itself — and the island is so remote that when the runway was resurfaced, materials had to be transported from the Philippines, Hong Kong and Korea, according to the constructors. “Lagoon Road” — the 30-mile road that runs from top to toe on Majuro — skims alongside the runway.
Don’t think about pulling over, though — there’s only sand and sea on one side, and that runway the other.
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Barra Airport, Scotland
At Scotland’s beach airport, the runway disappears at high tide
