Landing at Courchevel, french mountain airfield

[SPEEDMOONEY]

Courchevel Airport, elevation 6600 ft in the french Alps with a Mooney M20J

[carusoam]

Gilles, you have a winner with this one....

Is that a one way runway?

-a-

[SPEEDMOONEY]

All the french mountain airfields are one way runway

[Piloto]

Love it. Spectacular escenery. Thanks for sharing.

José

[Bennett]

In the early 1990s I was skiing at Courchevel with a friend. I was high up the mountain when I saw an airplane "fly into the mountain" below me.  I was sure it was a crash, and I skiied down to see what happened. I then saw that there was a strange looking runway with several aircraft on the ramp. The runway had a more or less flat short approach section, then a ramp upwards for about 40-50% of the runway, to a relatively longer level section, ending at the mountain. The entire runway length appeared to be very short. I couldn't believe that pilots would land there in anything other than perfect weather, and only then after practicing with experienced instructors.  I was told (that at that time at least) a pilot needed a special "license" to land there. I was led to believe that there were regular charter flights operating in and out of Courchevel.  I suspect that some passengers had the fright of their life in these charter flights.  Some years later I think I saw a couple of videos available on the web about this airstrip. My hats off to the Mooney pilot in the video who did it in a M20J. Braver, and a better pilot, than I am.

Here in California we have a few interesting airports such as Catalina at the top of the island.  On approach it looks like a carrier landing, but the real problem is that the runway is arched upwards, (not apparent when looking down on approach) and after touchdown it appears too short to stop on the runway, and pilots sometimes overbrake and slide off the runway only to view the other half of the runway after stopping.  Some years ago a jet did this and burned up, killing several people. In Alaska I've flown into air strips wher the "parking ramp" is a parallel strip much lower in elevation. Getting down is easy, but I had to use full power to (slowly) taxi back up to the runway. 

By the way, there are quite a few one way runways in the Caribbean that end at mountains.

[Jeff_S]

Was it just me, or did it seem like that J had de-ice boots on the wings? Is there an aftermarket STC for something like that?

[SPEEDMOONEY]

It's not de ice boot, but just black paint. Very useful to see the ice

[flight2000]

Awesome landing and airport. Nice job!!

Typical stupid comments from the peanut gallery as always...those on the video link, not here...

Brian