You’ll need oxygen just to taxi
January 14, 2010 by Mike Collins
Have you ever flown into Leadville, Colorado’s Lake County Airport, which at 9,927 feet in elevation claims the title of highest public-use airport in North America?
Bragging rights are climbing in China, which plans to build the world’s highest airport–at an elevation of 14,554 feet–in Tibet, Britain’s The Guardian reported. Let’s see, under U.S. regs, at that lofty height pilots will need supplemental oxygen just to taxi; better make sure the bottle is full. On second thought, never mind; the field elevation is higher than the service ceiling of anything I’ve flown recently.
Construction is planned to begin in 2011, take three years, and cost more than $263 million (in U.S. dollars). The newspaper said the project is part of an effort by China to make air travel accessible to more of its population, through the construction of 97 new airports by 2020.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:26 pm
I see a big problem with that airport to be built in Tibet. At ~14.5 thousand feet, aircraft takeoff performance will be degraded to the point where you won’t be able to carry anywhere near as big a load of payload + fuel as when taking off from airports at sea level. Hence planes will have to take off with many of their seats empty, or with so little fuel that they won’t get very far.
Also: How long will the runways be?
January 16th, 2010 at 11:59 am
Sounds like all of the single engine based airplanes there will be turbo Mooneys – no problem in my 252. Thanks for the story