On May 18th, the SF Airlines O37587 flight from Ningbo to Dubai took off smoothly, which means that after more than a year of construction day and night, the Ningbo Airport runway optimization project was officially put into use. The Ningbo Airport runway optimization project is the first non-stop construction project of a 10 million-level single runway airport in the country, and has also created many firsts in the civil aviation industry. After this project is put into use, the runway of Ningbo Airport can meet the demand of 170,000 to 195,000 takeoffs and landings per year.
The task of the Ningbo Airport runway optimization project is to build three optimized diagonal exit taxiways between the 3200-meter-long airport runway and the parallel taxiway, one vertical side connection road and related supporting facilities. After these three fast taxiways and other facilities are built, aircraft operating at Ningbo Airport can use these exits to quickly leave the runway, which further optimizes and improves flight takeoff and landing efficiency. The number of flights that can take off and land per unit time also has the possibility of improvement. The airport runway utilization rate is higher, and flight operations are more efficient.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that during this large-scale “surgery” on the airport runway, Ningbo Airport adopted a “non-stop” method. Throughout the entire construction period, Ningbo Airport did not stop flying for one day due to construction. This requires a large amount of construction time to be concentrated in the early morning hours. Construction personnel enter at midnight and leave before dawn. This puts high demands on internal construction scheduling, safety management, airworthiness recovery and other aspects of a 10 million-level airport. The difficulty of construction can be seen.
Ningbo Airport Group Chairman and Party Secretary Jianhan Feng said in an interview with reporters that the smooth implementation of the Ningbo Airport runway optimization project has enabled Ningbo Airport to smoothly transition from a single runway to a multi-runway era, and has also contributed to Ningbo Airport’s creation of a national important regional hub airport and helped optimize and improve the city’s business environment.
