Building a new runway is far more complicated than it might seem on the surface.
Airport infrastructure projects have been a hot topic this year. From Australia to Asia to the Middle East to the United States, new airport openings and expansions are in progress across the world. In any case, building or even adding to each airport will have been a far more complicated process than it may have appeared on the surface.
In particular, planners have to carefully consider an eye-watering number of factors when building a runway alone. Where there is another runway in operation close by, the task becomes even more difficult. Simply put, it is by no means a matter of laying the groundwork and letting the aircraft move in.
The harsh truth for airport operators has previously been summed up by global trade association Airports Council International (ACI). “The capacity provided by the airport system is determined by multiple factors, many of which are not directly within an airport operator’s control,” it wrote in a 2019 research paper relating to air operations in Europe. These factors primarily include an airport’s runway or runways, its apron, terminal infrastructure, and the surrounding airspace.
While planners may have full autonomy over where runways are positioned and how many there are, a lack of apron space for aircraft to move about or park on the ground could prevent the landing strips from operating at full capacity, for instance. Similarly, terminal space may be plentiful, but busy local airspace may mean air movements are capped, so the number of passengers that could in theory be processed by an airport will never be met.
All of that goes to say that each factor matters for lifting capacity, but it can only do so in practice if the other considerations are addressed. Local airspace restrictions are arguably the trickiest for airports to navigate. Authorities can plan and lay out infrastructure on the ground as well as possible, but the traffic that can actually use it will be dependent on what is nearby. Its own designated controlled airspace — or Terminal Maneuvering Area — might overlap another airport’s, say, or something as simple as noise restrictions could be in place and so limit operations at certain times. When adding runways, planners must consider these factors before breaking ground.
Among the most obvious constraints to growing capacity by opening a new runway is the airport itself. That stretches beyond just aprons and terminals. Whether it be public transport, roads, or car parking spaces, getting passengers on and off site is one issue. Add in the need for additional check-in counters, security checkpoints, passenger waiting areas, and aircraft docking gates, and more flights will mean more stress on every part of an airport.
There is no solid guarantee that building all of that will drastically improve capacity, too. According to a 1982 Congressional study, efforts undertaken in response to growing demand for flights tended to have the largest impact on reducing delays. Of course, where new long runways are built and properly equipped for independent flight rules (IFR) operations, capacity could increase. That said, factors such as the original runway configuration meant that the jump could be anywhere in the region of 20% to 50%.
While potentially significant, the cost and effort behind building an extra runway could deem the entire project unviable. An 11,000-foot (3,353-meter) runway with its basic safety area covered 130 acres (52.6 hectares), the study noted. Combined with other necessary clear zones, the area directly affected stretched to three or four times that. To put that space to work, the airport had to bring the rest of its infrastructure up to scratch. All of that effort risked going to waste when the other existing landing strip or strips were taken into consideration as well.
Outside upgrading airport infrastructure and building a new runway, its location relative to existing operational strips is key. Where two or more runways run parallel, spacing between a