Quote:
Originally Posted by Stephen
Actually it can be that easy. I grew up with runways as my second home and I've seen nearly every type of aircraft ever flown and have watched the Russians land bigger jets on a mud field -- different aircraft to be sure, but the weight was not the end all you might believe it to be.
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I grew up flying as well. Non stop. My family owned planes. All their friends owned planes. I grew up in rural Alaska where planes were used like cars. I am not an overly experienced pilot and never had a passion for flying given that every 3rd family i grew up with had a father who died in a plane crash,... but i am familiar with what it takes to actually set down a plane like that and how much runway its going to need to take off... not to mention that there cannot be any obstructions at either end (hills, etc). Just a Cessna 207 fully loaded often needs 5-6k feet of runway with no headwind to take off (though its under powered and easily overloaded). I've had dozens of moments where i thought we weren't going to make it on large strips. Additionally, the runway has to be able to support the physical weight of the plane. That means it has to be build from the foundation up, like a highway. Runways used to get destroyed all the time by planes landing on them for which they weren't built for. Particularly loaded cargo planes. I remember in AK once a fully loaded 747-400 landed on a runway full of forklifts for an oil company and they had to park the plane and completely rebuild and upgrade and lengthen the entire runway to not only fix the damage but to get it out of there again. My point is also that though it "might be possible"... it is a highly improbable scenario as its unlikely such a runway of this size and construction, long enough and build to standards to support a fully loaded 777, exists that was built covertly and not being monitored. It just can't be something secret that no one knows about...its a massive construction project of specific construction, requiring a very specific location and the runway has to be huge. And its something that every regional government in addition to foreign governments with satellite surveillance capability would be monitoring.