Round-up27 SEP 20263 min readDromopedia editors

Landing below the sea

A few airfields sit below mean sea level — on the shore of the Dead Sea, in Death Valley, on the floor of a drained Dutch lake. Below zero, the altimeter simply reads negative.

Bar Yehud airport in the Negev (01386-000-17)
Bar Yehuda Airfield · Dan Hadani · Public domain · Commons

Airfield elevations are measured from mean sea level, and nothing stops the figure going negative. Pilots' charts and performance tables are built on an imaginary reference level — the height where the standard atmosphere's pressure would be found. The FAA's pilot handbook notes that this datum "may be below, at, or above sea level".1 An airfield below sea level is unusual but not exceptional.

By the Dead Sea

MTZBar Yehuda Airfield IL · -386 M / -1,266 FT · RWY 1,200 M / 3,937 FTAbout 380 m below sea level, the lowest airfield in the world. Runway 01/19, 1,200 m, asphalt.

The lowest airfield in the world lies on the western shore of the Dead Sea, below the fortress of Masada. Its published elevation varies with the source, from about 376 m to 386 m below sea level, but none of them puts another airfield lower.2 The runway is 1,200 m long and paved.3

The Israel Defense Forces' engineers built it in 1962 as a gravel strip, to link Ein Gedi and Masada with the rest of the country, and it opened on 17 March 1963 as Masada Airfield. In January 1966 it was renamed after Yisrael Bar-Yehuda, the transport minister who had died the year before.4 Airline flights came and went over the decades. Today it serves light aircraft and helicopters, sightseeing flights and, since 2020, a tandem skydiving centre. Plans to turn it into a small international airport have not gone beyond the planning stage.5

The sea it is named for is still falling. Israel's Water Authority recorded the Dead Sea at 441.33 m below sea level on 31 August 2026. That is about a metre lower than a year earlier and 42 m lower than in 1976.6 The airfield no longer sits at the water's edge. The lake's surface is now some 60 m below the runway, and it drops further every year.

Death Valley

DTHFurnace Creek Airport US · -210 FT / -64 M · RWY 3,065 FT / 934 M64 m below sea level. Runway 15/33, about 930 m of asphalt; no fuel, daylight only.

Furnace Creek, in Death Valley National Park in California, is 210 ft (64 m) below sea level. It has one asphalt runway of about 930 m. The National Park Service owns it, no one staffs it, and there is no fuel and no lighting, so it is open only by day.7 The FAA's airport record warns of heaving pavement and "an extremely rough surface". The upkeep is done by volunteers of the Recreational Aviation Foundation under an agreement with the park.8 A borax company laid out the first strip in the late 1920s. The present airfield dates from the 1950s.9

Its elevation should help performance: air below sea level is denser, and denser air gives more lift and thrust. On a cool day one magazine crew measured a density altitude of 1,700 ft below sea level.10 Summer heat erases that advantage and more. After a rented light aircraft overran the runway and flipped on 17 June 2026, the park warned pilots that "extreme heat and high density altitude can reduce aircraft performance".11 The park's airstrip at Stovepipe Wells, by contrast, is 25 ft above sea level.12

On the floor of a lake

AMSAmsterdam Airport Schiphol NL · -3 M / -11 FT · RWY 3,800 M / 12,467 FTAbout 3 m below sea level, on the bed of the Haarlemmermeer, drained in 1849–1852.

Amsterdam Schiphol is the best-known airport below sea level. The Dutch AIP gives its elevation as −11 ft, about −3.4 m, and its lowest runway threshold is more than 4 m below sea level.13 The airport stands on the bed of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake pumped dry between 1849 and 1852 by three steam pumping stations.14 It opened as a military airfield on 19 September 1916, and early aviators knew it for its mud.15 The name is older than the airport. It is recorded around 1450 for a marshy tract nearby. Schiphol's own historians derive it from words for timber and low-lying land and dismiss the popular "ships' graveyard" story.16

Lower than Schiphol

Schiphol is not the lowest airport with airline service. Rotterdam The Hague is slightly lower, at about 14 ft below sea level.17 Further east, Atyrau in Kazakhstan, on the Caspian lowland, is 72 ft (about 22 m) below sea level by the Kazakh AIP. It is the lowest airport with regular international flights.18 Astrakhan, at the mouth of the Volga, is about 20 m below.19 In California, Imperial County Airport lies 54 ft below sea level and keeps a small airline service under the federal Essential Air Service subsidy.20

GUWAtyrau International Airport KZ · -22 M / -72 FT · RWY 3,000 M / 9,842 FTAbout 22 m below sea level; scheduled international flights.

The register lists every airfield with a negative elevation in the collection below. Some entries rest on thinner evidence than these. A strip in Jordan's Ash-Shunah al-Janubiyah is listed at 368 m below sea level, but no aeronautical publication confirms it.21

Sources

  1. FAA, Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, FAA-H-8083-25, chapter "Aircraft Performance", on pressure altitude and the standard datum plane.

  2. Published elevations: −1,233 ft in the AIP-derived pilot database Airmate; −1,240 ft (−378 m) in OurAirports and English Wikipedia; −386 m in Hebrew Wikipedia; −1,266 ft in other sources. See also the list of lowest airports. The Israeli AIP was not accessible when this was checked.

  3. Airmate, LLMZ; Ynet, report on the airfield, 2016 (in Hebrew).

  4. Bar-Yehuda Airfield, Hebrew Wikipedia, with its contemporary newspaper sources (in Hebrew); Yisrael Bar-Yehuda, English Wikipedia.

  5. Globes, report of 2019 on the plans for the airfield (in Hebrew); GoJump Dead Sea.

  6. Israel Water Authority, Dead Sea level measurements, data.gov.il: −441.33 m on 31 August 2026, −440.35 m on 31 July 2025, −398.95 m in October 1976.

  7. FAA, airport data for L06, Furnace Creek, data effective 3 September 2026: elevation −210 ft, runway 15/33, 3,065 × 70 ft, asphalt. National Park Service, Death Valley airports.

  8. National Park Service, agreement with the Recreational Aviation Foundation on Death Valley's airstrips.

  9. AOPA Pilot, "Airports: Furnace Creek", February 2020. Sources differ on the exact years: 1926 or 1929 for the first strip, 1953 or 1954 for the present field.

  10. Plane & Pilot, "24 hours in Death Valley".

  11. FOX5 Las Vegas, report of 1 July 2026, quoting the National Park Service.

  12. FAA, airport data for L09, Stovepipe Wells.

  13. AIP Netherlands, AD 2 EHAM, edition of 16 December 2010: aerodrome elevation −11 ft; threshold of runway 22 at −4.23 m. Current edition: LVNL eAIP.

  14. Cruquius Museum, polder drainage.

  15. Schiphol, "105 years of Schiphol".

  16. Schiphol, "The origin of Schiphol".

  17. SkyVector, EHRD Rotterdam The Hague. Sources give −14 ft or −15 ft.

  18. AIP Kazakhstan, AD 2 UATG Atyrau, AIRAC of 16 April 2026; Simple Flying, "Atyrau: the lowest international airport".

  19. Narimanovo Airport, English Wikipedia, citing the Russian AIP.

  20. AirNav, IPL Imperial County Airport, from FAA data; US Department of Transportation, Essential Air Service order 2026-5-8, 13 May 2026.

  21. Dromopedia register: Below sea level, open airports by elevation. Elevations come from OurAirports, or the FAA for US airfields. Ash-Shunah: OurAirports JO-0016, with no runway data.

Codes, elevations and runway lengths in the airport cards are from the Dromopedia register, built from FAA NASR and OurAirports. Each entry’s data page names the source of every field; see also About the data.