We all remember that moment when we took a road test and we were asked about potential hazards in the driving environment. A decent teacher would always tell you to mention anything that has to do with the weather, the traffic, and the road conditions. When it comes to airports and the sky above them, the situation gets even more complicated. Here are some interesting stories I found in the past few days regarding the weather, the traffic, and the “road” conditions in airports.
The first story is about the thing we all like to talk about (at least in Canada) – the weather!
I mentioned in one of my past posts that small islands that are served by a single airport can be highly vulnerable if that airport has to be shut down due to severe weather condition. We’ve had a great example of such a case on the Greek island of Rhodes, where a big sinkhole was created on the runway, causing the airport to be completely closed for 10 hours up until the sinkhole was filled. Flights had to be re-routed to other airports, and holidaymakers from Europe were stuck in there for a long time. It’s important to mention that the island of Rhodes is highly dependent on its airport and a substantial part of its economy, tourism, needs to use the airport in order to accommodate the charter flights from Europe. I’m asking myself what could happen if the maintenance work took longer than that? How do you keep things on the island running smoothly? At the end of the day, there are other islands around the world that face the same risk.
The second story is about the traffic. In an era where the tendency is to try to automate everything (Did someone mention the Google self-driven cars?) it was not surprising for me to read that an airport in Ornskoldsvik Sweeden, has an airport control tower that has no humans inside. The people who previously worked as controllers are now supervising the airport from a nearby town, and it is the first airport in the world to use that technology. Small airports are likely to be the early adopters of that technology due to cost saving. However, when it comes to airports that have significant amount of traffic, I tend to question how unmanned airport control towers can handle all the airplanes on the ground and in the air, especially in cases of emergency. In Europe, third party risk to nearby communities from airplanes is considered an environmental issue, and unmanned control towers will have to address that issue too.
The third story is about hazards on the “road”. A few days ago, NBC Bay Area reported about pilots who complained about the blinding lights coming out of the Levi’s arena, making landing at San Jose Mineta International airport complicated for them. It’s interesting to watch the video in the link that I provided, and notice that even the camera could sometimes not handle the amount of light coming out of that stadium during a major football game. Light pollution affects people who live in cities, and as we could notice, it affects even the airplanes who fly above them. It will be interesting to see how such a case is coordinated between the different authorities to solve the issue, since it seems pretty messy now.
Do you have other similar cases or thoughts to share?
Airportonomy 