Comment by basisword
13 hours ago
>> highway and warehouses at the end of the runway
It's astonishing that this is a thing. Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation? I can understand why it can't be retro fitted to existing airports but is it a scenario that's considered at new airports? Just seems like such an absolutely basic safety step.
> Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation?
But that's exactly what a runway is? They're extremely long, have ample safety margins, and have "protected areas" extending out on either end, and outside of that there are regulations about what can and can't be built along the extendend runway centerlines. But jetliners are huge, heavy, fast, and designed to go long distances - the stopping distance of a fully loaded jet at full takeoff speed is measured in miles.
Louisville is a major cargo hub. The airport likely was not built by the warehouses, the warehouses were likely built by the airport.
Yes, in fact, lots of the area that is warehouses to the south, and where the larger run way to the east and some buffer zone to the east used to be neighborhoods and they were bought and torn down to make room around the airport.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/1983ko2/what_ha...
A lot of the airport's surrounding buildings (to the South especially) are indeed UPS Airlines' own facilities.
Yes, new major airports (rare as they are) do try to acquire large areas of land, larger even than they think they need now, in anticipation of future expansion. However, for scenarios like this, there's limited utility to making the runway longer "just in case." They already pick runway sizes "big enough and then some" as the minimum to even bring planes of each size to an airport. So there is margin.
But no matter the margin, a plane can always crash on the wrong side of any fence. And people will always build right up to wherever you put the fence as closer to the airport is more convenient for everything airport related.
Airports are usually built (originally) out in the boonies away from the major metro area. As time goes by and that land gets more valuable developers grease palms of politicians in land use commissions to allow developments closer and closer to the airports.
Airports also grow themselves. Some municipal airports sited for small aircraft extend their runways to handle larger planes.