Madeira, Portugal - 4K Virtual Drive - From São Martinho, Funchal to the Cristiano Ronaldo Airport

Video recorded on November 5, 2020. Weather: 18° C / 64.4 °F

Fasten your seatbelt, Check your mirrors are properly adjusted, and enjoy this drive on the highways and streets of Madeira as we go to the Madeira International Airport Cristiano Ronaldo.

Our tour begins at the rua Velha da Ajuda, São Martinho, Funchal.

Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport, Madeira, commonly known as Madeira Airport or Funchal Airport or Saint Catherine Airport, is an international airport in the civil parish of Santa Cruz in the Portuguese archipelago and autonomous region of Madeira. The airport is located 13.2 km (8.2 mi) east-northeast of the regional capital, Funchal, after which it is sometimes informally named. It mostly hosts flights to European metropolitan destinations due to Madeira's importance as a leisure destination, and is pivotal in the movement of cargo in and out of the archipelago of Madeira. It is the fourth-busiest airport in Portugal. The airport is named after Madeiran football player Cristiano Ronaldo.

The airport is considered one of the most peculiarly perilous airports in the world due to its location and its spectacular runway construction. It received the Outstanding Structure Award in 2004 by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. The History Channel program Most Extreme Airports ranked it as the ninth most dangerous airport in the world and the third most dangerous in Europe. Pilots must undergo additional training to land at the airport.

Madeira Airport is a geographically unusual airport, as it is perched on a foreland jutting out to sea. At the end of runway 05, there lie hills and cliffs which make a direct ILS approach and landing unavailable. Instead aircraft have to do a visual approach which involves flying around the airport, then snaking around in a ~150° turn before lining up on a very short final approach. The airport's 05 end of the runway ends with a cliff with a motorway leading to the airport terminal below it. The runway 23 end of the runway is very interesting as it sits on a supported platform above ground as the ground below it is very far down. This time the approach path to runway 23 is more or less clear, meaning that ILS is available for approach.
Madeira Airport was officially opened on 7 July 1964, with two 1,600 m (5,200 ft; 1.6 km; 0.99 mi) runways. The first flight to land there was a TAP Air Portugal Lockheed Constellation with 80 passengers on board.

In 1972, the popularity of visiting the island of Madeira increased, so the runway was extended to allow modern and larger aircraft to land. Considered the Kai Tak of Europe because of its singular approach to runway 05, the decision was made to extend the existing runway instead of building a new one. The runway was extended to 1,800 m (5,900 ft; 1.8 km; 1.1 mi), with the extension inaugurated on 1 February 1986 by then president of the Portuguese Republic António Ramalho Eanes. In the meantime, a new terminal was built at the airport in 1973, handling 500,000 passengers.

However, as demand for tourism continued to grow, the runway was extended further. The newly extended runway—now 2,781 m (9,124 ft; 2.781 km; 1.728 mi) long—and terminal were inaugurated on 6 October 2002, and to mark the occasion, an Air Atlanta Icelandic Boeing 747-200, registration TF-ABA, landed at the airport. Although this was a rare event, some TAP Air Portugal flights on the Lisbon-Caracas-Lisbon route used to have scheduled stops at Madeira with Airbus A330-200 widebody aircraft.
In 2016, it was announced that the airport would be renamed Madeira International Airport Cristiano Ronaldo (Aeroporto Internacional da Madeira Cristiano Ronaldo) in honour of Madeira native football player Cristiano Ronaldo. The rebranded terminal was unveiled on 29 March 2017, with a bust of Ronaldo also being presented.

Neither the bust nor the name change were unanimous, actually far from a consensus, as the former was ridiculed by Saturday Night Live's character Cecilia Giminez, portrayed by comedian and actress Kate McKinnon, with the latter being subject to much debate and controversy locally by politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move.

A year later, sports web site Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust. However, this bust was never used; instead a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor, shown to the public on 15 June 2018.
#VirtualTour #VirtualDrive #Madeira

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