Kenparry:
Actually driving down the strip in a Landrover is a jolly good method. It’s an old standby test much beloved of airport engineers. I can even quote it from the Australian manual of standards CASR part 139:
Note: An empirical test for runway riding quality is to drive a stiffly sprung vehicle such as a medium size utility or unladen truck along the runway at not less than 65 kph. If the ride is uncomfortable, then the surface needs to be graded and levelled.
If you have doubts about a runway (and also the runway strip) then ask to be driven along it. If I have doubts, I insist on using the airport manager’s own car. It is amazing how quickly the airport manager remembers that the strip is too rough when he is asked to risk his own property.
You’ve triggered a good thought though – Vaneev opened the discussion with a concern about a specific runway. I don’t much about the QAR and its accuracy of measurement (and I don’t know where the accelerometer is located and if it gives the same vertical acceleration as the pilots experience in the cockpit), but is it possible to access the data and see the instantaneous vertical acceleration along the runway?
If it goes over 0.4g, the runway is too rough and the airline has quantitative reason to complain to the airport (and to the country’s regulator).
Incidentally, Boeing found that most of the time that a rough runway was fixed was after pilot complaints and not through airport initiative. If anyone does follow this through, please post your findings here ( . . . . Vaneev
).