Hiding a Runway to Avoid Landing Mishaps . . . . . .February 21, 2002 10:49 am EST
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's airport authorities said on Thursday they planned to camouflage a defunct part of a new runway at Tokyo's Narita international airport in a bid to keep aircraft from landing there by mistake.. .They will contrive to hide the concrete strip with green paint and camouflage netting to make it resemble a field, an airport authority spokesman said.
The New Tokyo International Airport Authority got into its pickle when local farmers refused to sell tracts of land located at what would have been the center of a planned 2,500-yard runway.
Because construction had already begun on either side of the disputed land, it was forced to lengthen the northern strip by 800 yards and abandon the other.
That left a 430-yard-long section of unusable runway -- too short for a plane to land on safely.
In 2000, a Japan Air System passenger jet accidentally landed on an unused strip of new runway at Tokyo's Haneda airport, a precedent that prompted authorities at Narita to take action, the spokesman said.
"It would be a huge problem if an airplane landed in the unused section of the runway," he said.
The new 2,180-yard runway is set to open on April 18.