Not all airports in the world present the same level of difficulty when landing. Some are especially challenging. He Paro International Airportin Bhutan, is one of these. According to experienced commander Chimi Dorjiaround 50 pilots have the necessary certification to descend in this part of the planet. This is the product of a rather peculiar combination of operating conditions and geographical aspects.
Paro International Airport is surrounded by huge mountains up to 5,000 meters high. This is where the first difficulty arises for the development of aeronautical activity in the area. The terrain greatly limits the approach and escape activities of pilots. But this is not all. The 2,265 meter runway is not very long and, furthermore, it is not visible until very late in the approach.
A challenging landing
When the plane approaches the airport it must perform a sharp turn in the final stages of landing. It should be noted that this procedure is carried out in a way completely manual. The pilots do not have the help of the Instrumental Landing System (ILS)). We are talking about a low visibility landing system that provides vertical and horizontal guidance up to a few meters before touching the runway. Something great, but…
It cannot be used in all scenarios. Furthermore, the system not only works with the aircraft’s instruments, but specific infrastructure on the ground is necessary. Specifically, locator antennas. The pilots, however, they have Very high-frequency Omni-directional Range (VOR), a quite different short-range VHF radio navigation system that helps them during the runway approach process.
Paro International Airport
Local authorities have limited airport operations to times of day that have natural lighting. There are no night flights. As if this were not enough, it is also recommended to avoid landing or takeoff after noon because weather conditions usually change unfavorably. Anabatic and katabatic winds usually occur in the area mainly during the afternoon, so the mornings are usually more ideal.
Currently, only two airlines operate at Paro International Airport. On the one hand we have Drukair, also known as Royal Bhutan Airlines. It is the flag airline of Bhutan. It has a small fleet of five aircraft consisting of three Airbus A319-100, one Airbus A320neo and one ATR 42 turboprop. The other airline is Bhutan Airlines, a private company that has operated since 2011 and has two Airbus A319.
Images | Jan Huber (Unsplash) | Mashrik Faiyaz (CC BY-ND 2.0)
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