Technologie

Always on call

As of temperatures around freezing point, the duty traffic officer requests regular measurements of the braking values (friction coefficient) on the surface of the take-off and landing runways. For this purpose a specially equipped car is used to measure the friction coefficient. If, on a measurement run values are obtained which are considered to be critical, the winter road clearance service is immediately notified.

Which clearance or gritting measures are employed depends on the amount of precipitation and the condition of the runways. As a basic principle, mechanical operations take precedence over the use of chemicals.


Clearing

From a snow depth of one centimetre, the clearance vehicles are employed. At present, the runways are cleared from the middle to the edge, depending on the prevailing wind. Combined into one process, the towed jet sweeper and the compact jet sweeper with snowplough, a sweeper and a snow blower operate simultaneously. When the compacted snow reaches a designated height it is thrown on to the adjoining area by a snow blower. In the immediate area of parked aircraft the compacted snow is loaded on to trucks using a snow blower and transported to a dumping area. Through these measures aircraft taking off, landing or taxiing are not delayed. Notwithstanding the prevailing weather conditions, the new generation of vehicles necessitates a time period of 15 minutes to clear the respective runway.

Melting

Melting measures can be applied in many forms: At Leipzig/Halle Airport, for ecological reasons, only mechanical melting and clearance of movement areas rather than chemical means is preferred. In order to ensure 100% operational capability of the airport, even under the complicated weather conditions during the winter months (e.g. ice rain or freezing deposits), mechanical clearance is not in all cases adequate. In these situations additional material is used for melting on the runways. In one case it may be expanded shale with a grain size no greater than 3 millimetres, in another an environmentally-friendly surface de-icing material of chemical composition. The salts and solvents used in the public transport network are, for technical reasons, not used in areas with aircraft.

Surface areas

The winter road clearance service at the airport has extremely large surface areas to clear and to keep in operation. With the northern extension of Leipzig/Halle Airport in the year 2000 as well as the reconstruction of the take-off and landing runway south including the apron and taxiways, this has increased considerably. Therefore, new clearance technologies had to be worked out and made available for the winter road clearance service in parallel to the airport expansion.

An impression of the size of the areas to be kept in operation is given in the following table:

Luftaufnahme der Nordbahn im Winter


Conditions 2004/2005 Conditions 2005/2006 Conditions since 2007
Take-off and landing runways 366,730 m² 246,400 m² 444,120 m²
Taxiways 727,568 m² 481,438 m² 975,376 m²
Aprons/Ramps 254,096 m² 315,250 m² 866,517 m²
Airport perimeter road 391,432 m² 222,010 m² 419,067 m²
Parking/Stand areas 218,265 m² 141,324 m² 184,416 m²
Totals 1,958,091 m² 1,406,422 m² 2,889,496 m²
       
 

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