London - China has blown up the tops of 65 mountains to build one of the most nail-biting landing strips in the world.
An £85-million airport in the city of Hechi, in the mountains of Guangxi in southern China, has been built at 2 200ft above sea level.
“We sent men up with explosives who dug holes and blew up the tops of the mountains,” said Wei Yuanzhe, a spokesman for the company managing the airport. “It was the only way to flatten them. Then we filled in the valleys between the mountains.”
With a runway just 1.3 miles long and 150ft wide – and with a 1 000ft sheer drop on one side – arriving at Hechi will be “like landing on an aircraft carrier”, the city’s mayor said.
“We started planning the airport in 2001 and it took us a long time to work out whether it was feasible,” Mr Wei added. “Actually we looked at a lot of other locations, but we decided in the end that this was the easiest one.”
He added that there had been no accidents during five years of construction and safety tests. When it opens in August, the strip will be a transit stop en route from Chongqing, in central China, to Haikou in the south.
The country already boasts the world’s highest civilian terminal – the Daocheng Yading airport in Garze, Sichuan – which sits at 14 472ft above sea level. - Daily Mail