[Grut]

One other thing is that there wouldn't be an updraft from the cliff on approach since the wind would be blowing towards the aircraft, off the cliff top. So it's either a tall tale, or a garbled one, or for some reason (big mountain at the other end?) aircraft have to make downwind landings there.

[aruanan]

One other thing is that there wouldn't be an updraft from the cliff on approach since the wind would be blowing towards the aircraft, off the cliff top. So it's either a tall tale, or a garbled one, or for some reason (big mountain at the other end?) aircraft have to make downwind landings there.

No, in this particular place the geography is such that there is, at least during daytime hours, a continuous updraft along the cliff that made that kind of approach necessary and they had to land coming in off the sea. The guy said that he had been invited to watch the approach because of his background in aviation and knowing the pilot and it was really scary. This was at least 25 years ago that I heard this. It may have been my uncle who was a pilot who was telling us this at a family reunion. At one reunion when I was about 6, he and his family flew down to the reunion in his single engine plane and he took everyone up for a ride. That was the most exciting thing I had ever done by that age. I'll ask him if he's ever heard of that airport and let you know what he says.