i hope those pillars are strong

below is the recently (2003) extended runway at funchal airport in portugal madeira. the original 1400m runway was notoriously short and, as a result, sometimes dangerous for landing planes (see here). the runway extension won the iabse’s ‘outstanding structures award’ and rightly so: due to an obvious lack of land, engineers have supported the extension on 180 pillars, each 70m high. on the last photo you can see what seems to be a car park that now lives under the end of the runway. (thanks to adam for the info & pics) [edit: it seems these photos are from airliners.net. click on the pics to go to the relevant source]