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Old 26th Sep 2015, 11:18
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OverRun
Prof. Airport Engineer
 
Join Date: Oct 2000
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My sympathies for the airport. Looks like a dolomitic sinkhole. Very hard to predict and prevent. Sudden collapse. Thankfully there was no aircraft on top when it happened.

I had one at an African airport recently. We were rehabilitating and upgrading the runway. Sinkhole appeared suddenly in the runway. Thank goodness we had an engineer on site as part of the works, so we quickly saw it and identified the cause. The problem was that the President was inbound in his jet, and no-one was prepared to close the runway or tell him that he couldn't land. Much high African drama followed with the President eventually being diverted a few minutes before landing.
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