This is where I was

As some of you may know, during college I lived for two months in Honduras-in the capital city of Tegucigalpa. As I was flying in, the Honduran sitting beside me was speaking in broken English about the runway and how it was very dangerous and how even the locals get very nervous flying in there.

He explained to me what would happen, and he was very very right-the runway is just over 5,000 feet long, one of the world's shortest-especially for a 757. On one side is a five or six foot fence that they have to barely clear and on the other side is a cliff and a hill-so if you don't stop in time, well, oops.

Sure enough, when we landed, it was rough-I was able to look over and see those wing flap things sticking straight up, and the brakes hit hard-you have to have special qualifications to fly into the Toncontin Airport.

During my time there, I became best friends with the airport, you could say-where I lived was literally right across the street from it. There were flights in three times a day, and you could tell the time of day just by hearing which one landed, and you could tell the difference in the way the engines sounded.

Once we even walked to the end of the runway and laid underneath the airplanes as they went JUST overhead. In fact, the American Airlines 757 that went right overhead was too close and going too fast and my camera couldn't snap a picture of it. That's the one that comes the closest, but Taca and Continental also come in right before:
















































































Lying there underneath those planes was probably one of the single coolest things I've ever done in my life. I mean... can you say you've done that?

Point of this post: I just saw a news blurb on Yahoo! about one that wasn't so lucky... either yesterday or today. So this post is kind of in tribute to the airport and their blasted runway... God bless those people who were in the crash.

I still want to go back and do it again.