Winter Time Operations and Snow Clearing
Since its opening Stockholm Arlanda has always managed to continue its operations during heavy snowfall and difficult weather. The airport administration claims to be world-leading at clearing snow from the runways. Arlanda has a policy to never close due to snowfall. Heavy snowfall can however cause delays. During heavy snowfall at least one runway stays open but in bad weather condition there may be delays even if flight operations continue at all times. Not just runways need to be cleared, aprons and aircraft parking areas need snow clearing as well. The airport has a total of 250 000 m2 to clear from snow and ice, at the same time as the aircraft continue taking off and landing. During the colder half of the year Stockholm Arlanda has about 65 seasonally hired snow removal staff. Together with permanent staff, they form a team of 100 people who provide snow removal services. Special routes are planned for sweeping teams, which clear each route at intervals of 35 to 45 minutes. The sweeping teams are directed via radio from the air traffic control tower. When snow removal is completed on each runway the surface is tested by a friction vehicle which measures friction value. The airport announces the friction value, and then it is each pilot who decides whether this value is sufficient for a landing. The friction value determines how often a runway must be ploughed and treated with anti-skid agent.
Read more about this topic: Stockholm Arlanda Airport
Famous quotes containing the words winter, time, operations, snow and/or clearing:
“I know that winter death has never tried
The earth but it has failed:”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Lady Dellwyn ... for the first time began to entertain some suspicions that she had a heart to bestow. Not that she was actuated by that romantic passion which creates indifference to every other object and makes all happiness to consist in pleasing the beloved person, [but] only overstraining delicacy so much as to feel it almost a crime to charm any other.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“We should conserve evil just as we should conserve the forests. It is true that by thinning and clearing the forests the earth grew warmer.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)