LPMA / FNC, Santa Cruz
What the official aviation documents actually say about the runway on stilts, the wind limits, and the training a captain needs to land here.
The bit everyone photographs
The extension is a deck carried on 180 concrete columns, roughly 1020 m long and 180 m wide, standing about 57 m above the bay. It was inaugurated in September 2000, and it is why the eastern half of the runway appears to float.
The structure won the IABSE Outstanding Structure Award in 2004. Its designer was António Segadães Tavares.
The number almost every guide gets wrong
Two figures circulate, and both are true about different things. 2781 m is the total pavement as built. 2481 m is the Landing Distance Available that the AIP declares — the figure that actually governs an aeroplane. Quoting the larger one as “the runway length” describes nothing a pilot uses.
Why it is genuinely difficult
This is not reputation. It is the operational description in the official publication:
The Airport is located on a plateau on the east coast of Madeira Island. Except for the seaside, ground raises rapidly very closed to it. This fact generates, very often, wind variation and turbulence. Also severe low altitude wind shear conditions and / or micro burst are likely to be encountered.
Quoted exactly as published, including its non-idiomatic English.
The AIP also states plainly: “Straight-in approaches not authorized from Funchal VOR to Runway 23.” The circling approach you see in the videos is not a flourish — it is the published procedure.
Filmed and published by Approach and Departure Videos.
Filmed and published by DutchPilotGirl.
The rule that decides your day
Almost no airport in the world puts numerical landing wind limits in its AIP. Madeira does, by wind direction, and these are the same figures the live outlook on our home page computes with.
| Wind direction | Runway | Mean | Gust |
|---|---|---|---|
| 300°–010° MAG | Either | 15 kt | 25 kt |
| 020°–040° MAG | Either | 20 kt | 30 kt |
| 120°–190° MAG | 05 | 20 kt | 30 kt |
| 120°–190° MAG | 23 | 15 kt | 25 kt |
| 200°–230° MAG | Either | Combined 25 kt | — |
The claim that turns out to be true
For revenue flights with aircraft carrying more than 10 passengers, the operator must run a training programme approved by ANAC, the Portuguese civil aviation authority, for each aircraft type. It covers day and night landings and take-offs in both directions, with emphasis on balked landings.
A level D simulator satisfies it with no line training at all. With a level C simulator, the captain must additionally perform one real landing and take-off at Madeira with an instructor aboard.
A commander’s authorisation lasts 6 months.
If the wind is out of limits
Air traffic control will not issue a landing clearance and will instruct a go-around when the limits are exceeded as the aircraft reaches the published missed-approach point.
A commander may still land on their own responsibility — which, the AIP adds, “does not relieve him/her from compliance with published wind operating limitations”. That sentence explains something travellers find baffling: why two aircraft minutes apart can make opposite decisions.
What to do if your flight diverts
Being straight with you
All three are widely published elsewhere. None of them could be traced to a source we would stand behind, so they are named rather than repeated.
Sources contradict each other flatly — “about 70 m each” against “120 m total, 60 above and 60 below sea level”. The designer’s own site could not be reached. We publish the column count and the deck height, and no column height.
The 15 September 2000 inauguration is the better-attested date and is what we give, but several sources date completion to October 2002. Neither could be settled against a government or operator primary source.
The AIP says only “buses and taxis”. The route numbers and the Aerobus fare that circulate online come from travel sites, not from the operator. Check at the airport rather than trusting a number from us.
Sources
ais.nav.pt
www.madeiraairport.pt
www.madeiraairport.pt
iabse.org
Getting from the airport
The airport is 13 km from Funchal and the AIP lists only “buses and taxis”. If you would rather not work out a bus at the end of a flight, a transfer is booked in advance.