We were once landing on Madeira, one of the most dangerous airports in the world. Even a nice landing there is quite uncomfortable. For some time you fly very close to the ocean, heading straight into the cliffs, and only in the last moment the plane seems to make a right turn to approach the runway. We made a wobbly touchdown, people already wanted to get up, when suddenly the plane was again lifted a few meters and rolled to the right, only to then slam very hard onto the runway again. When we came to a stop, the pilot commented: "We, errm, have arrived at Funchal, in case you were, errm, irritated about the landing, we were too."
Your description of the landing reminds me of the old Hong Kong Kai Tak airport approach.
You basically had to fly straight over the city, high rise buildings straight ahead, and bank right as hard as the plane would let you at just the right time to hit the runway.
Ah, the good old "checkerboard" approach. Visible in the second video from 3:10 to 3:25 on the left, and when it was clearly visible it was time to turn right and land. After the move to the new Chek Lap Kok airport in 1998, the checker board fell into disrepair, but was renovated a while ago. It's visible from my office in its old red-and-white glory.
Flying into old Kai Tak as a passenger was just insane, especially in a cross-wind and if you had a view out both sides of the plane. You'd see low buildings and streets under the plane with buildings much taller than the plane very close on both sides. Then immediately have to start side-crabbing as the buildings thinned out once over the airport fence line. And you'd never not be paying close attention because of the hard wing-over turn right before the final dive into the airport. Felt like that shot in Star Wars of the X-Wing dive rotating into the Death Star trench.
I'm from Perth, one of the windiest cities in the world, and had a very similar situation landing once, a few years ago .. seemed like we were on center runway, everything seemed fine for smooth landing, and .. what felt like meters before touchdown, a gust came up and we rolled hard left, the wingtip barely escaping scraping the ground. The pilot corrected the roll and we did a go-around for another attempt, 30 minutes later while the wind settled.
Was such a harrowing experience that, when travelling back home from abroad, I try to fly into Port Hedland and then just take a 10-hour bus ride. (Okay, I admit that I do that mostly so I can get my jet-lag adjusted at the beaches of Shark Bay along the way .. ;)
