I saw some thread on Quora where a guy asked the same question, but for a airport that can handle the A380, which is the largest airliner in existence, which probably translate to extreme costs, extreme amounts of passengers,etc…
However, what about a smaller and simpler in features regional airport with a 2500m runway, which can take on the A319 and A320 (but not A330), Embraer 195, the smaller Atr 72 and so on…?
Basically an airport for a non-capital city that is 100k to maybe 500k in size.
Also, kind of related, what are 1200 to 1600m concrete airports in USA used for? I was randomly looking stuff on Google earth and found a lot of airports that are of that size, but I can’t figure out what planes use that, very small and sport planes could use them of course, but around 1500m seems like a overkill, so do some smaller commercial planes use them to transport passengers? If so, which planes?
Built at a cost of $313 million back in 1997, officially to relieve congestion from St. Louis (Lambert Field) International Airport. Unofficially, a taxpayer-financed pork barrel project by a Member of Congress to appease his constituents and keep Scott AFB open (local jobs), and ensure the Congress critter kept his job as well.
So if you have some land and a spare half billion or so, you can build a regional airport.
Plus $12 million a year in taxpayer money to support the thing. I live in St. Clair County and help pay for MidAmerica with my tax money. My property tax was $4116 for a 1900 sq ft home in a modest neighborhood. A good portion of that money pours into Mid America.
What makes matters even worse is they added another runway to Lambert Field which caused an entire city to be demolished. The cost was $1 billion and it’s hardly used. The number of flights out of Lambert is half what they used to be in 1990.
1600 meters (approx. one mile) is about the minimum you’ll want for even a small twin turboprop like theEmbraer 120, or something a little larger like theDash 8 Q400, both of which have been used by regional airlines. That length isn’t really overkill considering a safety margin you’ll need for bad weather or a poorly executed landing.
Spain seems to build a few new airports now and again, unlike Great Britain which has conniption fits whenever the subject is brought up. Ciudad Real airport, located 235km (146 miles) south of Madrid, was meant to be an alternative to Madrid’s Barajas airport.
It cost more than €1bn to build. It opened in 2008 but went bankrupt and closed in 2012.
BBC
It sold for 10,000 euros in 2015 Which was a lot of money in those days.
From the article:
The $155 million project includes a 7,140-foot (2,180 m) by 150-foot (46 m) runway, numbered 14/32, and a 58,000-square-foot (5,400 m2) terminal designed to accommodate 1.4 million passengers a year.
It does look like the sort of airport the OP proposes would come close to $200M. Variations would happen of course based on land values, difficulty of actual construction, what capability for ground services or value-added activities you need and how large/fancy do you want the terminal.
As to the 1200-1600m category airports, I believe there fewer than there used to be in the past (rising costs of General Aviation operations, urban encroachment OR loss of rural population, etc) but yeah they are still around. Besides non-airline type operations, there are also lighter regional/local aircraft that can use this kind of field, in places where there is no traffic volume need for anything bigger. Pages 23-25 of this PDFshow a table of wet and dry landing distance requirements for various types of aircraft. According to it a Beech 1900D or SAAB 340 would be well within the envelope at 1200m (4000 feet) landing distance.
You’d probably be surprised at what can land on 2500m of runway. A330s regularly operate to the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, which has a 2500m runway. Sydney’s shorter runways are around 2500m and they will put large aircraft onto those.
I think you’re both overestimating how much runway is needed. A regional jet such as a BAe146 can land in about 1200m at max landing weight (38,000kg) and it doesn’t have reverse thrust. This landing distance includes a safety factor of 67%, so the test pilots were landing in less than 800m. The Dash 8 Q400 is significantly lighter with a landing weight of around 28,000kg and it has reverse thrust. Airports of around 1500m in Australia tend to have mid sized turboprops, lots of lights twins, and occasional jets. Fokker F100s regularly fly to Port Augusta which has a 1600m runway.
London City Airport is 1500m and is served by BAe146 / Avro RJs and Airbus A318s as well as turbo props.
The US may not have this type of commercial jet traffic to its smaller runways but it would have the piston twins, turbo props, and biz jets.
Typically on smaller airports it’s not the length of the runway that is the problem, but the strength of the pavement. If the pavement is not rated for the loading from a particular aircraft type then flights will need to be approved by the airport and will generally be limited to a certain number per week to minimise damage to the pavement.
Boeing has a factory for their narrow-body airliners in Renton, WA, and the runway there is only 1640 meters. When they started building the 747 they built a new factory for them in Everett, but some of the early ones were flown to Renton for some of the finishing work. I don’t imagine there were passengers or cargo on board, which means less weight and maybe lower safety margins. And when they took off they only needed enough fuel to get to Boeing Field, which is about 4 miles away. But apparently it can be done.
I live near Farnborough Airport which has a 2440m runway. The biggest planes that use it regularly are Boeing 737 and Airbus A319. In fact, a 737 just took off over my house as I was typing this. During the Farnborough Airshow last year an A380 displayed as well as big military transports.
Indeed. By regulations, the minimum runway length for the USAF KC-10 is 7500ft. On a cool dry day close to sea level, with a steady wind straight down the centerline, a KC-10 will be legal to operate (takeoff and land) at close to 400k lbs gross weight on that 7500ft runway. With a fleet average empty weight around 250k, that allows for approx. 100-150k of fuel, cargo, and/or passengers. This assumes, of course, that the runway and taxiways are rated for the KC-10’s weight category.
I have been airborne in less than 3000ft in the KC-10. A 300k lbs wide-body airplane with 150k lbs of thrust will “get up and go” much faster than you’d expect.
I’m just quoting the specs listed in the links. For the EMB 120, “1,420 m (4,660 ft) minimum” and for the Dash 8 400, “4,675 ft / 1,425 m.”
I know you can operate even larger planes off relatively short runways. I have permanently white knuckles from flying in and out of Chicago Midway, Reagan National, and some other airports built in the DC-3 era that really shouldn’t be handling jets.
There are still quite a lot of Dash8-200 and -300 series around, rated for under 1200m. As are several different configurations of ATR-42 and -72. Of course if your regional service flies Britten Islanders or DHC-6 Twin Otters, that’s the lap of luxury.
The Embraers (both the 120 and the RJs) do seem to have considerable landing requirements, though.
And Runway 1/19 at DCA Reagan at 2185m is fine for operating most models of A319/320, 737 or MD80/90
Just about every county in my area has an airport fitting that description. None of them get airline service (one did a long time ago), just general aviation and the occasional business jet.
Ah, I didn’t follow those. The problem with those one number type figures is that they make a number of assumptions. For example, max take-off weight and standard atmospheric conditions at sea level. You may need more or less runway depending on the actual weight and conditions.
I did some numbers for the Dash 8 Q400 to get a more realistic figure.
Operating empty weight (from wiki link): 17.8 t (1000 kg)
Payload (74 passengers at 100 kg / pax): 7.4 t
Zero fuel weight (empty weight + payload): 25.2 t
Fuel for 500 NM + reserves: 2.5 t
Take-off weight: 27.7 t
This is close to the base max take-off weight here which would give a take-off distance of 1300m (from the same link). The Q400 is a big aeroplane, smaller Dash 8s use significantly less runway and you can reduce payload to get off a shorter runway as well. I’m surprised about the Embraer, that’s quite poor performance for a small plane.
It’s important to remember that the basic level of safety is the same regardless of where you are taking off from. That basic level allows you to either stop or go after an engine failure at any point in the take-off roll. At a longer runway you may appear, as a passenger, to have a significant margin over that safety level but it may be the case that that extra margin has been used up by carrying more payload/fuel or reducing engine thrust. If there is no engine failure then you have a significant performance margin, particularly in a twin compared to a trijet or quad.
Point being that you shouldn’t worry about taking off from an apparently short runway in a jet. The payload and engine thrust has been adjusted to ensure that even if an engine fails, there are still safe options for the crew.
The situation going on in Kansas City touches on some of points in this thread. The airport that serves the Kansas City area (known locally as “KCI”, but whose airport code is “MCI”) has a three-terminal configuration, and there is a movement to turn it into a single-terminal configuration because reasons.
I realize that KCI is not really a “regional” airport. While Kansas City, Missouri, has just under 500,000 people, the surrounding metro area comes in just over 2 million people.
Anyway, the proposed cost of converting the airport to a single-terminal configuration is just under 1 billion dollars. I don’t think this includes modifications to the runways, since I believe the runways are adequate, and the reasons for the single-terminal configuration is for passenger convenience, airline code sharing, etc.
ETA: The 1 billion dollar price tag should be taken as the upper end of the price range for building a regional airport, with the lower end being around the 3-400 million range mentioned upthread.