Not all airports are created equal - as this idiosyncratic collection shows.
There may not be extensive duty free shopping to keep you entertained while waiting for a delayed flight, but we're willing to bet should you ever find yourself killing a few hours at any of these airports, you'll be more than distracted by their other features:
1. Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, Maldives
The airport serving the Maldivian capital Male is one of the few airports in the world that takes up an entire island - the runway is surrounded on all sides by water.
2. Tenzing-Hillary Airport, Nepal
This tiny airport in Lukla in the Himalayas is known as the gateway to Mount Everest, and it's also the most dangerous airport in the world thanks to the precarious mountain weather and a runway that has a huge drop into the valley below at one end and a looming cliff face at the other.
This prisons facility in the US is next to the commercial airport in Oklahoma City. It's the home of 'Con Air', the service which transports inmates into, out of and between other federal prisons via the two gates on the right which connect directly to the temporary holding prison.
4. Ice Runway, Antarctica
This fieldwork airport near McMurdo Sound is made out of sea ice every summer, and can only be used for a few months at a time. Apparently it's not unlike landing on concrete.
5. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Saba
Saba is a Caribbean island under the jursidiction of the Netherlands, and the whole place is basically a 13 km-wide volcano. Should you wish to visit, bear in mind it only has one road, one ATM, and the runway is the smallest in the
6. Madeira Airport, Portugal
The Portuguese government came up with the idea of using huge 70m tall columns to expand Madeira's tiny runway without having to reclaim any land from the sea. It's still thought to be one of the world's trickiest places to land since it's surrounded by sea on three sides.
6. Madeira Airport, Portugal
The Portuguese government came up with the idea of using huge 70m tall columns to expand Madeira's tiny runway without having to reclaim any land from the sea. It's still thought to be one of the world's trickiest places to land since it's surrounded by sea on three sides.
7. Black Rock City Municipal Airport, Nevada, USA
Black Rock City Airport is in the middle of the Nevada desert - and it's only open one week a year for festival goers on their way to Burning Man.
####8. Kansai International Airport, Japan Kansai airport near Osaka came with the hefty price tag of $20billion: since there was no land that could be used for an airport near the city, the authorities created an island made from landfill of 21 million cubic meters of rock excavated from nearby mountains. The airport is as close to invincible as is humanly possible - it emerged unscathed from the Kobe earthquake and in 1998 even the glass in the windows survived a typhoon in which wind speeds exceeded 200kmph.
####9. Paro International Airport, Bhutan Paro Airport is situated at the bottom of a deep Himalayan valley and requires the pilot to execute a turn to get the plane parallel to the runway. It is so treacherous apparently only eight people are qualified to attempt the landing.
####10. Greystone Airport, Florida, USA John Travolta has his own private airport at his Florida mansion which lets him take off and taxi right into his house.
It's currently undergoing renovations to make it even more amazing:
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