Each day thousands of passengers fly into or out of Manchester Airport and even during perfect weather conditions it’s a finely balanced operation which gets travellers to their final destination.
Yet when temperatures plummet as they have done this week, the airport faces additional challenges. Snow and ice are particularly dangerous for aircraft – you don’t want to be landing on a slippery runway.
Then there’s the 20 miles of runways, taxiways and stands that have to be cleared of ice and snow, which is no easy feat.
What makes it even more challenging is that the airport can’t rely on using grit, which is how roads, paths and car parks are treated, as it’s corrosive and can damage aircraft.
The snowploughs in action
(Image: PA)
Instead the runways are treated with de-icing fluid that prevents them from freezing. Another factor which helps is that the runway surface is slightly grooved, offering better traction for aircraft when it is wet or icy.
Although the de-icing fluid can help prevent some snow from building, when the snow is as heavy as we’ve experienced this week, the airport has to deploy its fleet of over 30 snow-clearing vehicles.
Even a little bit of settled snow can take a lot of effort to clear. Just one inch of snow equates to more than 7,000 cubic metres of snow being clever from the runways.
For such a large amount of snow you need a hefty machine to deal with it, which is where the Combined Jet Sweepers come in. Manchester Airport has nine CJSs, which are worth over £100k each.
A tractor-mounted snow plough
(Image: MEN MEDIA)
These big yellow trucks are equipped with 12m snow ploughs to the front and high-powered snow blowers to the rear, dealing with the brunt of the white stuff. Supporting the CJSs are nine tractor-mounted ploughs and six snow brushes.
The airport also has three de-icers, which are used to spread de-icing fluid on the runways and taxiways, and five gritters, which are for roads and walkways but not on parts of the airfield used by aircraft.
To allow the fleet to fully mobilise, the airport closes the runways ensuring that the snow can be cleared away quickly and safely, helping passengers get on their way.
During the winter months the airport has extra staff on standby to provide support, including an adverse weather team which can be deployed depending on the forecast.
In the past week Manchester Airport has had to close its runways four times due to snow, but thanks to this fleet of vehicles it’s been able to reopen as quickly as possible, keeping disruption to a minimum.
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