There is a subset of airports that might be characterised as those with only one runway and non aviation people in charge. Some airport managers/boards are not aviation people at all, and neither understand the concept of redundancy nor care about operations. They operate inadequately, and others suffer as a result. This is NOTHING to do with the aviation professionals that work at the airport, and everything to do with the Board and most senior management of the airport company.
The non aviation managers would be the first to complain if any aviator flew from LAX-LHR with only three of the four Boeing 747 engines working because they don’t understand redundancy, yet they operate their own airport with a single runway and no backup. Possibly there was nothing in their law degree or accounting course that said it couldn’t be done. So when runway repairs are needed (which is every 10 years or so) they keep the facility in service and try and patch it as they go. One of my benchmarks of an airport management is the time that they allow the engineers for shutdown so construction can proceed. Anything around the 6 hour mark shouts out to me: ‘moron at the top’. I’ve even seen 5.5 hours, but I didn’t hear the shout because I was laughing so hard at their idiocy. There is a long list of problems that such tight time limits cause, but the most pressing one is that the facility is kept sub-standard [and may be even dangerous] for weeks on end.
There are several options to do the job properly at airports with one runway. The first is to close the runway completely while the work is done. 2000m of runway typically needs about 13000 tonnes of asphalt. Three plants working 24 hours should lay that in 4 days. Then lay 6000 tonnes of porous asphalt on top for friction – another 2 days. Then allow 1 day for lighting and markings. So a 7 day shutdown of the runway, after which it re-opens as fit-for-service. Note the use of porous asphalt to reduce the closure time rather than grooving. Oh – did I mention that porous asphalt costs slightly more than grooving? Probably about 2 pence per passenger more. There are a whole range of other scheduling and design options that can also be used.
But if the airport has been properly run as a full-time serious place, there will be other runways built that can be used while the shutdown occurs (such as LHR) or even the parallel taxiway (LGW) that can be used. If these aren’t available - well that airport is either running on too tight a budget or isn’t a full-time serious place. In that case, the airport should take it on the chin, and close for the week. There are usually plenty of transportation alternatives for that week - trains, buses and other airports. And if the airport ever wants to run as a full-time serious placed, it can always build the facilities it needs for redundancy.
Of course it only happens that way sometimes. There are too many airport managers/boards who are not aviation people, and they are not about to cut their cashflow one little bit by closing. Since they don’t know about aviation, they think that the airport makes money from retail, rental, carparking, and the like. The runway is just a nuisance that costs money. A look at their annual report will show their attitude – the “not aviation” ones will be all about income from the various sources and the runway won’t even get a mention. This sort of forgets the fact that ‘no runway = no income’ and that the airport’s core business is about aircraft taking off and landing safely. For non-aviation people, if repairs are inconveniently needed they will be (a) deferred as long as possible and (b) not allowed to interfere with the running of the airport.
Thus we arrive to my earlier remark about only allowing a 6 hour window for construction, since any more will affect operations. And work is to be done at night, which is the worst possible time for this type of construction with too-rapid cooling of the asphalt, poor construction joints, water trapped in the pavement, etc. And of course the work is scheduled for the quietest season.
I don’t know BRS. Do they have an alternative runway or taxiway? How long is the time window for construction? Is it at night? Is the CEO a lawyer or accountant? How does their annual report read? When is their quiet season?
Last edited by OverRun; 7th Jan 2007 at 07:47.