An End in Itself

Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International airport has shelled out a lot of money creating a long way around an old problem. If you snatch a quick look at this diagram [ tinyurl.com/2mj4qf ] you'll soon understand that of which we speak. Rather than have airplanes queue to cross runways, Atlanta's new "end around" taxiway gives aircraft a non-stop, albeit circuitous, path to their departure runway's holding point. Under the old arrangement there was always a deadly lingering trap for air traffic controllers who might inadvertently clear an aircraft to cross an active runway in front of an aircraft taking off or landing. In fact just this month an Atlanta ATCO lost his license for doing that in a momentary lapse during a hectic period. At a cost of $42M weighed against fuel-savings of around $28M annually, the measure should pay for itself quite quickly. The new way out will come into service at the world's busiest airport next month. Over two thirds of Hartfield Jackson's departures are to the West, which means that the 4200ft long end-run loop taxiway, dubbed "Victor", will be heavily used. Other airports, such as Dallas Ft Worth are slated to follow Atlanta's lead.

The only other option would have been to go beneath the runway, however bearing in mind the runway's pavement depth factor and the height of a tail-fin, that would never have been practical. There's also a limit to the incline a jet can climb up. As it is, for vertical clearance purposes with landing and departing traffic, the "end around" option drops the taxiway by 30 feet as it crosses the active runway's centerline.

An added bonus would be the ability to comply with the new shorter deicing holdover times that have recently created turmoil during the East Coast ice-storms of this last week. Many of the departing aircraft at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports found that not only did the on-hand stocks of fluid run out much more quickly, getting back to join the deicing queue was an endless loop in itself. On Friday at JFK, Royal Air Maroc kept one plane full of passengers on the tarmac for nearly 14 hours. A Virgin Atlantic flight from London - diverted to JFK when bad weather temporarily closed Boston's airport - sat on a taxiway with almost 200 passengers on board for about six hours. A second Virgin Atlantic jet that was supposed to have flown to London boarded about 100 passengers for a 9:45 p.m. flight Friday, then kept them on the plane until sometime after 4 a.m., when the flight was canceled. Sometimes a longer taxi can be another way of avoiding a lengthy queue.