Nicholas49
15th May 2011, 15:34
Afternoon all,
I wonder if someone can help answer a question that arose from an article in this weekend's FT. It says: "Birmingham airport has capacity for 18m passengers a year and is investing £65m to extend its one runway, which will allow aircraft to carry enough fuel to reach the US west coast and Asia. Work is due to be completed by 2014." [my emphasis].
Is the part in bold in this statement correct? If Birmingham airport currently handles flights to Dubai and Florida, is the extra fuel needed to get to Los Angeles / San Francisco genuinely the 'restricting factor' (if I can call it that) in using the airport for those routes?
In other words, I am asking whether the runway length really imposes a restriction on the amount of fuel carried, thus affecting possible flight distances? The runway is already long enough to handle long-distance aircraft such as the 747 and A330/340....
Thank you for any clarification you can provide.
Nick
I wonder if someone can help answer a question that arose from an article in this weekend's FT. It says: "Birmingham airport has capacity for 18m passengers a year and is investing £65m to extend its one runway, which will allow aircraft to carry enough fuel to reach the US west coast and Asia. Work is due to be completed by 2014." [my emphasis].
Is the part in bold in this statement correct? If Birmingham airport currently handles flights to Dubai and Florida, is the extra fuel needed to get to Los Angeles / San Francisco genuinely the 'restricting factor' (if I can call it that) in using the airport for those routes?
In other words, I am asking whether the runway length really imposes a restriction on the amount of fuel carried, thus affecting possible flight distances? The runway is already long enough to handle long-distance aircraft such as the 747 and A330/340....
Thank you for any clarification you can provide.
Nick