What it looks like landing at the Nuuk Greenland Airport

or worse - depending on weather.

Spectacular place Greenland!

...when you are a few hundred feet above the water and just as close to the rocky shoreline.

Lots of great pilots out there!!!

Thanks for posting!

and cool! Wow.

That orange glow of high pressure sodium street lamps.

Most of the street lighting in our city has already been replaced by "white" LEDs that are a little too blue for my taste, but not as bad as the ghastly bluish light of the mercury vapor lighting I remember as a kid.

In this video I can easily imagine getting off the plane into the cold and snow and ending up somewhere warm and cozy.

It's the orange city lights that do it for me.

Makes Chicago Midway look easy. And that one scares me silly every time.

Which isn't too bad, really. As a pilot who flies jets, takeoffs from shorter runways are a lot more nerve wrecking than landings. With less than 3,000' of runway to go, the centerline runway lights change from white to alternating red and white. If you aren't off the ground yet, the pucker factor goes way up even if you know everything is OK. If everything is not OK, there's a decent chance you are going to use every inch of that runway.

Instruments look 80s vintage

But have seen planes slide off icy runways there, and also 30 below zero temps! Enjoy it now, as it melts away!

But no terrain around it except for Dundas mountain, which is more like a hill.

Landings at the old Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong were known as a Kai Tak Heart Attack.

The airport sat in a bowl, studded with apartment buildings, surrounded by water and mountains. At the end of the approach was a low altitude 47 degree turn at 200 mph only 2 nautical miles from the airport. Beneath the plane, apartment buildings and lots of people.

It was especially exciting during high winds, crosswinds and typhoon season. Pilots had to fly this landing stick and rudder style. The exact opposite of the new airport on Lantau Island.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kai-tak-hong-kong-airport-scary-landing

(Sorry, no clue how to post articles or videos)

IIRC, he mentioned a target, painted on the side of a mountain, as the glide path marker.

When you see the target on the mountain turn right. Pretty low tech and another thrill in heavy weather.

You could look into apartment windows during the decent. I wonder how the occupants felt.

Scary, and yes, looking right in the apartment windows.

I used to love that approach and airport. It was always fun to ride it into Hong Kong, and it especially got your attention in bad weather.

Then it was just a 10 minute (when traffic was light) to Central. It was possible to land, clear immigration and customs (with a carry-on), and be in one's hotel room in about 15 minutes, or at least as I remember it. The Gurkhas for security, as well.

It is probably for the better that they moved the airport though.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.