We need to carry out maintenance on our runways in order to keep them in good condition and ensure they comply with the relevant safety standards. Curious about what runway maintenance entails? Read all about it in this blog.
We have six runways at Schiphol. Every year, one of the runways undergoes what we call routine maintenance for 1 to 1.5 weeks. During this period, we carry out all kinds of small(er) scale works. These include checking and repairing the asphalt, cleaning or replacing lights, removing rubber from aircraft tyres, doing small repairs, moving the grass and removing weeds.
In addition, one runway undergoes maintenance for a longer period of several weeks each year. During this period of major maintenance, the runway is given a major upgrade and usually we combine several large(er) activities. These include laying a new layer of asphalt, replacing the lighting, improving the rainwater drainage and replacing and modernising cables and electrical installations.
As well as routine and major maintenance, we carry out small and short-term maintenance works around every 8 weeks. We do this kind of minor maintenance 6 to 7 times a year on each runway. And then there are other works needed to keep the runways operational, such as construction works for a new taxiway and technical works for runway stations.
Because the runways are not available for take-offs and landings while they are undergoing maintenance, air traffic temporarily makes use of the other runways. This non-standard runway use can sometimes lead to more noise nuisance for neighbours, but sometimes less. That is why we have an annual plan in which you can see when the runways will be undergoing maintenance.
As you can imagine, we cannot wait too long to begin the work if there is a matter of urgency. It is therefore possible that a runway is out of use for a few hours. Before we start work on the runway, we always check whether weather conditions and traffic demand allow for another runway to be used for air traffic. If it is more favourable to the local area to postpone maintenance - and if the nature of the work allows it - we do so. Because the different runway use may cause inconvenience to the surrounding area, we try to complete the work as quickly and efficiently as possible.
