4 ms·

I had no idea commercial airliners took off from or landed at uncontrolled airports. Sounds scary!

• geoffeg 5y ago
  It's quite common, at least in the US (where I have most of my experience). It's generally not scary, pilots coordinate with each other on the radio, announcing their intentions. There are, however, some pilots who seem to not make more than the bare minimum number of calls or don't seem interested in listening to the other pilots near the airport. Additionally, there are guidelines for how to enter the airspace of an uncontrolled airport to reduce congestion and the chance of a collision. There are a few exceptions, one of them being an approach during poor weather, which appears to have been the case in the incident mentioned here. In those situations, the approach controller usually coordinates arriving and departing aircraft to use appropriate runways. I'm not sure why that didn't happen in this case, but I haven't gone and looked for the ATC archives.
• gambiting 5y ago
  Boeing used to sell a protection kit for a 773 to allow it to land and take off from unpaved airports: http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.htm http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.htm