A rather big plus for PPRUNE as one struggles on with everyday aviation.
I was working on a partial-runway repair project last week. Single runway and an inadequate parallel taxiway. No problems on paper – adjust the declared distances for the shortened runway and accommodate the jets by moving the construction equipment off the runway when they were landing or taking off.
Unusually, it all went pear shaped. The repair section was not finished in the time allowed (not finished? understatement because we spent most of the night planning how rip the poor quality result up!!), but we still had to move the jets past the unfinished works.
We did so by using a follow-me car which led the aircraft down the bitumen runway bits outside the works (the airport is diplomatically forgotten but it starts with B and we’re leading 738, F100 and 717 aircraft in case any of you Ozs think this sounds familiar).
The width of pavement past the works was a big problem – everyone was saying it was not enough for a code C taxiway at 18m. Someone suggested it wouldn’t work at all and we needed to be bringing the stairs out to the runway and making the punters walk – but I’m sure that was just Australian humour. But we just couldn’t get 18m width.
Then I remembered the Tech Log discussion a couple of months ago (in this post) about minimum taxiway width for code C aircraft and 737s. Some people, and certainly myself included, could have missed that and used 18m taxiway width as the minimum width for a 737. But the true answer is 15m width; which we had at this airport by about 0.1mm. So we could do the marshalling-taxi thing on a genuine legal width.
I guess it is easy with engineering stuff inthe office, with air-conditioning and hot/cold running secretaries walking around, to determine the right clearances and widths. But out in the field, the engineering is a lot harder. The e-mail doesn’t work properly up the bush, there are no head office people on hand to pontificate and take the rap, and the decision comes down to a lonely you. So when faced with a possible 15m taxiway width for a 737?? Well, check PPRUNE and go forward. Thanks guys.