PDA

View Full Version : Airport size limits


chornedsnorkack
15th Feb 2007, 11:40
How big landplanes can use existing airports?

There is some talk of 80x80 m box. Indeed A380 is built to have wingspan of exactly 79,8 m, and Airbus 380-900 is supposed to be exactly 79,8 m long as well.

But Cossack has wingspan of 88,4 m and is 84,0 m long. It is not restricted to hauling Buran between Ulyanovsk East and a few other Soviet Union airports built for it - it is happily running charters with outsize loads to sundry airports.

How can this be done? How come its nose or wingtips do not collide with something?

Also, there are the SST-s. While Concorde and Charger are manageable in size - 61,7 m long Concorde, 65,7 m Charger are both shorter than B747 - L-2000-7 is over 80 m long, B-2707 is over 90 m, ditto about Boeing HSCT and Airbus AST2, MD HSCT is over 100 m long, and JAXA NEXST is 104 m or so.

How is your airport going to handle the NEXST?

At least, SST-s have delta or swinging wings with modest spans (compared to subsonics) even when spread.

But then there are the ground-effect military transports. While most of them are seaplanes (no need for airport infrastructure), Boeing Pelican is supposed to be a pure landplane - with 147 m wingspan.

How can a Boeing Pelican be handled in an existing civilian airport?

How big planes could the existing airports handle at most? Be-2500, an amphibian, has slightly greater wingspan at 156 m.

GearDown&Locked
16th Feb 2007, 15:55
This doc could have some answers for you...
http://www.eng.ucalgary.ca/Civil/NLAircraft/Atrgpap.pdf
GD&L

chornedsnorkack
19th Feb 2007, 10:18
Interesting. Seems that Boeing 747-X is supposed to have 88 m wingspan (near Cossack wingspan), 85 m length and over 770 ton MTOW.

Note that the Calgary review makes no detailed description of what exactly the wingspan issues are. If Cossack can use your airport then so should 747-X... unless they have bridges that break between 600 and 770 ton load.