CARIBBEAN SNAPSHOTS (The World’s SmallestInternational Airport) copyright 2002 Wayne Bowen

The World’s Smallest Airport

One of the most exciting things about flying into Sabais also the scariest - arriving.

You can only land by hurtling in, parallel to a stonymountainside that seems close enough to touch. Lookingout the land-side window, it doesn’t take a genius torealise that any sudden gusts of wind in the wrongdirection could smash the air-craft like an insect ona craggy skin. With what seems as little as 15 feetbetween the bare stones and the small propellerplane’s wingtips - jets don’t land here - it’s aheart-stopping experience that’s been known to soberdrunks. It’s also during this approach that manypassengers first start praying - ALOUD.

In these small planes, passengers and crew share thesame cabin, so looking forward through the pilot’swindshield rather than providing comfort, actuallytends to heighten anxiety. If one does look though,there’s a feeling of being in a forty-five-degreeplunging, roller coaster ride without rails. Insteadof slowing down, the plane seems to speed up, bucking like a speedboatslipping through choppy seas. Rushing to meet thelanding gear is a tiny flatland sticking out like asmall ledge or building block from the main mountain.On either end, it falls off in sheer cliffs surroundedby water. To the uninitiated it seems impossible thatany pilot could be skillful enough to land right on theedge of this rock-shelf without careering a few storiesinto the sea below.

Just as the lives of doubting passengers start‘flashing-before-their-eyes,’ the shudder of wheelstouching land, coupled with the roar of engines beingput into reverse throttle and brakes straining toavert disaster, all combine to reassure the timid.People visibly relax and fake smiles give way to realones. A fleeting camaraderie similar to that shared by

disaster survivors, waves over some passengers anddisappears just as quickly once they’ve disembarked.Landing here is always a thrill. Perhaps not entirelysurprising, given the airport’s exotic cliff-edgelocation and the fact that Saba has the shortestlanding-strip of any international airport in theworld !

PHOTO: Arrivals/Departure Lounge

Long before any airport was built however, difficultlandings were common on Saba. For centuries the onlyway to reach the island was by sea and the volcanicisland’s rough terrain always posed problems.Surrounded by cliffs and with none of the flat sandybeaches common to other Caribbean islands, there wereonly two areas considered safe enough for passengersto disembark. These were at Fort Bay and ‘the Ladder.’For fear of destroying themselves against the stonycoastline, biggish boats rarely came close to shoreand passengers had to be landed from smaller vessels.

If sea landings were difficult, getting around onceonshore was even more daunting - with virtually noflat land, one is continuously walking either up ordown inclines. The island is so rugged that forcenturies no roads existed. Communication between thefour villages was by way of steeply dangerous,hand-hewn stone steps and dirt tracks, cut through thebushes. Everything from tiny buttons to grand-pianoshad to travel along these cardio-challenging pathways,often hand-to-hand by ‘human-chains’ up and down themountain. ‘Expert’ engineering-opinion over thecenturies said that no roads could be built on theisland. In 1938, homegrown Lambertus Hassel set out todisprove this ‘fact’ when he started construction of aconcrete road to connect the communities. Builtpractically by hand, without the aid of tractors andby gangs of wheel-barrow hauling islanders, it wouldbe dubbed ‘the Road that Couldn’t be Built.’ The firstmile and a half took five years. Whatroad-building-knowledge Hassel had came from acorrespondence course. Before this road was built, the

communities on Saba were so isolated that up to theearly 1960s, each village is said to have had its owndistinctive accent ! Truly amazing for a tiny fivemile square island, whose population has probablynever been more than 2,000 at any one time.

PHOTO: The road that ‘couldn’t’ be built

As if building an ‘impossible’ road was not enough,the incredible Saban islanders soon started dreamingof building an airport as well. Just as the road endedinternal isolation between villages, it was hoped thatan airstrip would help make the island more accessibleto the ‘outside’ world. The tough terrain, madefinding a spot to put an airport seem impossible,until some enterprising people cleared a spot known as“Flat Point.” When the daring French aviator, Remy F.de Haenen landed a single engined plane there on the9th of February 1959, it was concluded that building acommercial airstrip could become a reality after all.Once the decision to do so became official, work begunon paving a landing-strip and making a new section ofroad leading to the airport.

Opened to regularly scheduled flights in the Summer of1963, it was named the Juancho E. Yrausquin airportafter a popular Dutch Minister of Finance and Welfare.Photographs of the Dutch monarchs hang in the tinyArrivals/Departure which feels overcrowded with anymore than eight people inside. It hasn’t changed muchover the years. A few fading, black and white photos,tell the story of the pioneer flight that made it allpossible and a similar display is mounted at the localmuseum

Strangely enough, though there is more traffic in andout of the island today, Saba remains largely unknownoutside. Still, it has become renowned amongst a smallset of scuba divers. The waters surrounding the islandconstitute a marine park and are some of the mostpristine in the Caribbean today. The island and its

quaint red-roofed houses are a perfect getaway fornature lovers and hikers in particular. If you don’tscuba, there is little more to do than hike around theisland admiring nature or the typical green-shutteredhouses, tightly packed together in the villages. Manyhave above-ground graves or family-vaults in theirgardens and it was once common for families to havetea on the gravestones every afternoon. This‘communion’ with the ancestors may even be appreciatedby the deceased, since reports of ghost-stories andhauntings on the island seem rarer on Saba than inother islands.

Some of the most popular computer games around todayare flight simulators. They let you ‘fly’ virtuallyany sort of aircraft into any country in the world.Some are so realistic that real pilots use them topractice on at times. One game called “AVSIM” invitesgamers to practice their STOL or Short Take-Offs andLanding skills at two Caribbean airports on St Barths(French) or Saba. In reality only a handful of pilotsare licensed to fly in and out of either airfield. Thegames simulators describe the 1,300 foot long Sabafield as a real challenge. And the twice as long StBarth’s strip with mountains on either end as a biteasier. The same techniques used to land and take off in real-life have to be used in the game. Whiletake-offs aren’t as scary for the passengers, they’requite exhilarating nonetheless. Holding the planestationary for several minutes, the pilot revs theengine till the maximum speed is reached. All thewhile the plane is straining and pulling, seeminglytrying to escape. Eventually the pilot releases thebrakes and the air-craft sling-shots forward as if itwere being shot off an aircraft carrier.

For both gamers and passengers there is real reliefand elation after a successful lift-off from theshortest international airport runway in the westernhemisphere