A New Flight Plan
By Paul Edward Parker; Kevin Dillon; Kevin Dillon
The president of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation expects that a relatively new proposal to extend the main runway at T.F. Green Airport will receive federal approval and that construction could begin as early as 2010.
“Sitting where I’m sitting today, I would find it very difficult to believe that the process takes us anywhere other than this alternative for so many different reasons,” said corporation president Kevin A. Dillon. “This essentially eliminates the wetland impact of the runway extension. It substantially reduces the cost of the runway extension. It substantially reduces the property acquisitions. It substantially reduces the roadway relocation issues. For all these reasons, I continue to believe this is the best alternative.”
In June, the Airport Corporation’s board voted to add a third proposal for extending Green’s main runway to those under review by the Federal Aviation Administration. The first two call for extending the 7,100-foot runway to the northeast, which is where Airport Road passes the airfield. One of those plans would create a 9,350-foot runway; the other, 8,700 feet. The plan Dillon backs would create an 8,700-foot runway by adding to the southwest, which is where Main Avenue passes the airfield.
In response to a public records request from The Providence Journal, Dillon provided the paper with conceptual plans for the southwest extension plan. It shows the main runway being extended nearly to the current location of Main Avenue. The runway’s safety overrun area would extend across the current road. Beyond the overrun area, Main Avenue would pass by the airport on a curve instead of its current straightway.
Dillon stressed that the plans are conceptual and that the specific distance would be subject to change as more engineering work is done if the proposal receives approval.
Dillon outlined the steps ahead for the proposal:
An FAA consultant, paid by the Airport Corporation, is reviewing all three proposals. The consultant will examine environmental impacts, including those on wetlands; noise impacts, the amount of land that needs to be taken, the number of businesses that would be relocated and changes to area roadways.
At the conclusion of the review, the FAA will designate a “preferred alternative,” which will be subject to public comment.
After that, the FAA would issue a “record of decision,” designating which plan would be followed, if it passes muster.
Dillon said he hopes that decision would be issued in about 17 months, sometime in the spring of 2010.
As part of the review process, some of the plans would be drawn up. After a decision, the plans for the chosen proposal would be completed, and the project would go out to bid.
The schedule then would be up in the air, said Dillon. “A lot depends on how the money will flow for this program.”
Dillon declined to cite a timetable for finishing the project, but said construction could start in 2010 and could take until at least 2012 or 2014, depending on whether the main runway can be extended at the same time the airport modernizes its shorter crosswind runway.
Dillon said the airport’s 7,100-foot runway no longer makes economic sense.
“A medium hub airport, to be limited to a 7,100-foot runway, we’re simply not going to be competitive as we continue to chase added service levels here at the airport, particularly related to the West Coast and certain international destinations,” he said. “When you think that T.F. Green has the shortest runway of any medium haul airport in the country, it’s really limiting our ability to be flexible in the future to respond to whatever the demands of the airlines are.”
The problems are not only theoretical ones in the future, he said. They can affect, as an example, the smaller regional jets that fly from Green to Atlanta. “Depending on the weather condition, they may have to bump as many as nine passengers off that aircraft to maintain the proper weight and balance to get off the ground on a 7,100-foot runway,” Dillon said. “With the economics that the airlines are facing, trying to absorb these huge jet fuel costs and other operating costs, the last thing they need is to have to knock off as many as nine passengers and lose nine fare-paying passengers.”
The length of the runway affects how far planes can fly through simple physics.
“An aircraft needs rollout distance to get off the ground,” Dillon said. “The heavier the aircraft, the more rollout distance they’re going to need. So, if you’re taking on more fuel because you’re going to fly farther, you’re making that aircraft heavier, so it needs more distance.”
But, he said, the added distance of a 9,350-foot runway compared to an 8,700-foot runway wouldn’t help Green much. “To go with an 8,700-foot runway, we’re not really giving up anything. I think the markets that we can reasonably foresee in the future can be adequately served with an 8,700-foot runway.”
He also said that now is the time to go ahead with airport improvements, even though the economy is soft. “We could walk away from this runway expansion, but then, when the economy does turn — whether that’s a year from now, three months from now or three years from now — we’re not going to be positioned to take the opportunities that could come our way.”
One of those opportunities could be international flights, especially to Europe. While the current runway would be an issue in attracting service to Europe, Green has an advantage over many airports its size: Its terminal already has a customs and immigration station, which sees use for summer charter flights to the Azores. “It really gives us a leg up in terms of marketing to international carriers because it’s a requirement,” Dillon said. “We want to make sure that it’s not the runway length that knocks us out of the box.”
The airport chief hesitated to put a price tag on the runway project until the final plans are drawn up. “When I first arrived here, I was hearing numbers of 500, 600 million dollars to complete this program. I can tell you, if the scenario I’m advancing moves forward, it’ll be nowhere near that number. It’ll be considerably less.”
He said he expects the FAA will provide money for the project, though the federal agency, by law, could only provide 75 percent of the cost. The Airport Corporation would have to come up with the rest. The corporation is a state agency, but receives no money from the state general fund. The corporation pays its bills from revenues generated at Green and five smaller state airports under its control. Those revenues include fees that airlines pay to use the facility and that travelers pay to park at the airport.
One way Dillon hopes to save money on the project is by using something called EMAS — engineered material arresting system.
As a safety measure, runways are required to have a 1,000-foot clear zone at each end in case a plane runs off the end. But EMAS can reduce that distance. The substance is like a cross between concrete and Styrofoam. Under the weight of a jet, the EMAS breaks apart and slows the plane, much the way a pile of sand or gravel would slow a runaway truck.
EMAS at Green, which would be designed to stop a Boeing 767 traveling at 70 knots — about 80 mph, would reduce the 1,000 safety zone to about 600 feet.
That would allow the project — the runway extension and safety zone — to be built on property currently owned by the airport, either on the airfield or mostly vacant land across Main Avenue from the field.
Even so, residents in three areas would lose their property to the project and those in a fourth area would have the option to sell to the airport.
Two of the areas where the airport would take land under the proposal are at the ends of the new curved section of Main Avenue so it could be connected with the existing roadway without making a sharp corner, which would reduce traffic. Together, those areas total about four acres.
A third area where the airport would take land is an 11-acre strip in a direct line from the end of the runway. The strip is needed to set up runway approach lights.
Surrounding that strip on three sides would be a runway protection zone.
“The runway protection zone is essentially an area the FAA would prefer to have uninhabited off the end of a runway,” Dillon said.
The airport could not forcibly take property in the runway protection zone, he said. “We would be desirous of purchasing the home, but if they decided they wanted to stay, they could stay.”
Dillon, who took over as airport president in February, said business leaders in Rhode Island have stood behind plans to extend the runway and add service to business destinations in the United Kingdom, on the West Coast and St. Louis.
“The business community understands very well that the success of this airport is very much tied to the overall success of the economy,” Dillon said. “If you don’t have a successful airport, you’re, nine times out of ten, not going to have a successful economy. So they understand what needs to happen here. They understand that this airport needs to grow and develop so that the overall economy of Rhode Island continues to flourish.”
He said a recent study calculated the airport’s economic impact on the region at $2 billion.
While the airport needs to grow, Dillon said he is aware of what that means for the Green’s neighbors.
“I’m the first to say a major airport in the middle of a relatively small city is a major impact. We are causing impacts. But, at the same time, with the bad that comes along with the airport being located here, there’s an awful lot of good, and I truly believe that the good outweighs the bad, and we want to continue to enhance the good that we can do for the community.”
“If you don’t have a successful airport, you’re, nine times out of ten, not going to have a successful economy.”
Originally published by Paul Edward Parker, Journal Staff Writer.
(c) 2008 Providence Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.