Ducks at Skiathos Airport

Not the bird type of duck. That might possibly be dangerous:

But then this could have been quite nasty as well.

Skiathos is one of those places where the end of the runway is pretty much the start of a beach, and onlookers do gather to watch the shallow landings there. You might remember the infamous Maho Beach on St Maarten and the KLM 747s coming in to land there (webcam here, although the 747s don’t do that route anymore). But if anything, the south end of Skiathos Airport runway is even closer to the beach than even that:

Yes, that’s the Aegean Sea on the left and the runway on the right. We’re probably looking at about 30m between the edge of the apron and the edge of the water. I would measure the exact distance for you, but Google Earth has blurred the whole airport complex out in case the terrorists can’t work out how to use its sister app, Google Maps. Or… just go there.

Nothing to see here.

Bizarre.

Anyway, all of this preamble is because a Wizzair A321 Neo almost killed some onlookers by coming in PROPERLY LOW this week:

And that’s where the ducking comes in. The video is well worth a watch (plane lands at about 1 minute if you’re really pushed for time) and it also includes footage of the “famous” famous Air Italy 737-800 approach of 2013. But this one is definitely lower.

I don’t think anyone would have got hit if they hadn’t ducked (although Robert Wadlow would have got a new parting), but if you slow the video down to 0.25x speed and hit pause at the right place, you can see that the wheels are literally only 5m off the ground as they (just) pass over the guys standing at the Armco. (reference: A321 Neo wheel fully inflated is 1.2m diameter)

That’s a bit too close for comfort.

Quack.