Pago Pago International Airport — Pago Pago, American Samoa

A relic of Cold War-era space planning sits on a narrow strip of flat land on Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa: Pago Pago International Airport, often called Tafuna Airport locally and coded PPG. Its runway, unusually long for such a small island, was extended partly to serve as a potential emergency transoceanic abort landing site for the Space Shuttle program, a role it never ended up performing but one that still explains the runway's outsized length relative to local traffic needs. Hawaiian Airlines operates the airport's main scheduled service, connecting Pago Pago to Honolulu several times a week, while smaller regional carriers link the territory to independent Samoa and other Pacific island groups nearby. Steep volcanic ridges rise sharply around the airfield, and tropical weather systems, including occasional cyclones, periodically disrupt the limited flight schedule serving this remote corner of the Pacific.