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What it’s like to land on the world’s shortest commercial runway

Flying into Saba isn’t for the faint-hearted. The vertiginous slopes and sea cliffs of this five-square-mile island in the Caribbean don’t leave much space to land a plane. But Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, clinging to Saba’s only bit of flat land, is proof that it can be done. With a strip of asphalt just 1,300 feet long (about 400 meters), only 900 feet of which are “usable,” the runway is not much longer than an aircraft carrier.