Comment by gwbas1c
16 hours ago
> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.
That works in costal areas, but not inland.
There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.
16 hours ago
> The common solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to rout aircraft over water.
That works in costal areas, but not inland.
There's no large body of water near the Louisville airport.
The Ohio River is a large body of water fairly close if someone was going to relocate Louisville airport.
The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of water", especially because it is a river that moves relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids just downstream of Louisville.
But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development you'd have to displace to even consider moving the airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and down stream of Louisville.
Tradeoffs. Physical land under the airport is lost either way, but land near the old airport becomes more useful where the river itself couldn’t have buildings in either situation. Thus moving it near a river or other large body of water is a long term net gain.
As to a crash, ditching into an industrial area isn’t significantly worse for the passengers than ditching into a set of rapids, but the rapids are far better for the general public.
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It's not even a mile wide here. The widest spot I measured just east of the falls was 0.75, at Utica it is 0.34 and at Westport it's 0.39.
I don't think effectively damming (alternatively, rerouting) the Ohio River is a solution to relocating an airport in Louisville. That's a wildly ambitious undertaking compared to most other land reclamation projects.
Yeah, the terrain around Louisville poses a challenge for placing an airport, but they could do like Cincinnati does, and have their airport located across the river. Or place it between Frankfurt and Louisville. Or do like Pittsburg and make the terrain flat enough for an international airport.
Inland it can work if you have a river. London City Airport would be an example