The world's shortest runway is located in the Netherlands Antilles, a group of islands in the Caribbean which are already home to some of the most interesting options for runway placement, such as the airports at Saint Maarten (Right next to a populated beach), and Saint Barthelemy (Ends pointing toward another populated beach, and a hillside). But nothing tops unusual than Saba's airport. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport as it's called, boasts one of the world's shortest runways, at 400m long. The approach is so dangerous, the Netherlands Antilles' Civil Aviation Authority requires pilots to be certified to land there, and especially for the commuter planes that regularly frequent SABA, there is absolutely no room for error, or it's a long swim back to what could be a pink slip by the airline.
SourceNASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Dryden Flight Research Center comes up with many unusual aircraft, from the iconic Bell X-1 that broke the sound barrier, to the thrust vectored X-31. This airplane, known as the AD-1 was built to test a strange concept of an asymetrical or "oblique wing," where in midflight, the wing pivots about 60 degrees from a standard straight wing configuration, so that it is not symetrical to the airflow as one side of the wing sweeps forward, while the other sweeps backward. Flying in between 1979, and 1982, the AD-1 has conducted 79 flights, and is now currently on display at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos, California, which is not too far Southeast from San Francisco.
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