Looking out of the plane, my vertigo lunges at me. Instinctively, I grab the armrest furthest from the window and the 200ft sheer drop, and strain against the seat belt. Far below, ferocious waves smash onto jagged rocks: I feel about to plummet.

We haven’t even taken off yet. I’m scared because this is no ordinary airport. It’s on the tiny island of Saba, in the Dutch Caribbean, and has the shortest and most stupidly located runway in the world (for scheduled flights).

It is grafted onto the side of a dormant volcano, with 200ft cliffs on three sides, and has just 1,300ft of tarmac. That’s not much longer than the deck of the USS Nimitz. And the Nimitz has wires and nets to help a plane stop, and a catapult to aid takeoffs. Here, the only thing on the runway is a house-sized letter X painted at each end.

The pilot flew past the runway on my flight over here, to see the way the windsock was blowing. I asked him what the X was. “It means the airport is closed to commercial traffic, fella. The runway is way too short.”

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He saw my expression come over all “So why the hell are we pointed at it, then?”.

“Nothing to worry about,” he added with a smile. “We get exemption permits to come in. Only after special training, though.”

The landing was terrifying, all right, like a theme-park ride gone wrong, but now the pilot was pivoting the plane for takeoff, the back wheel 6ft from the edge to make every foot of tarmac count. This was worse. We turned for takeoff, and I looked down the runway to keep my mind off the drop. It didn’t help. I’ve seen check-in queues at Heathrow that were longer.

And I know a thing or two about planes. I wish I didn’t. I know the propeller plane I’m now locked inside is a De Havil-land Twin Otter. I know they first flew in 1965. And I know that all planes need roughly twice the length of runway to take off as they do to land.

There is a roar and the air tenses. The pilot applies full brakes, then powers up and releases the brakes with a jolt – the poor man’s Nimitz catapult. We lurch forward. The man next to me crosses himself.

We are trundling. I don’t want to be trundling. I want to rocket, to whizz, or to whoosh at the very least. I shove my feet hard into the floor, trying to back-pedal. It doesn’t work.

The giant X passes underneath and we are still on the ground. Then there is no ground. The ground ran out. There’s just a cliff, a drop and lots of rocks, but somehow, stupendously, we fly.

It’s hard to credit, but there hasn’t been a single serious aviation incident here, and after the 12-minute flight back to St Maarten, I feel more confident about flying, rather than less. If these guys can serve such a ridiculous airport year-round and keep coming home safely, then I guess landing at a real airport, with a runway of usually about 8,000ft, must be a piece of cake.

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