And then it is goodbye

Everyone is talking about it – Salzburg Airport is closing its runway for a period of 5 weeks in order to have it completely refurbished. Watching construction machinery and construction workers on the runway instead of aircrafts landing or taking off, will be quite an unusual sight.

“At 9:55 pm sharp the last aircraft landed in Salzburg today, April 23rd. Now we are starting to refurbish our runway, which will therefore be closed for 5 weeks. On May 29th we are going to re-open the new runway for air traffic at 6:00 am. There is a saying “The last one out turns off the lights” that seems quite appropriate tonight. I wish everone involved in the refurbishment every success and a trouble-free operation“, says Bettina Ganghofer, CEO Salzburg Airport.

During the last months numerous planning activities have been completed and the accesses to the construction site, the site fence, trailers as well as traffic logistics have been prepared. When today, shortly after midnight, the runway will be closed for a period of 5 weeks, the reconstruction of the “longest, straight road in Salzburg” (2.850 m long and 45 m wide) will start. Salzburg Airport would once again like to call on your understanding that the refurbishment will cause extra traffic impact due to the trucks driving back and forth to the airport using especially the so-called “Kleines Deutsches Eck”. It is essential to use the hot, liquid asphalt as fast as possible, which also makes truck traffic necessary on Sundays and even holidays.

Working procedures

After dismantling the old runway lights and their wiring, the old concrete pavement will be cut and grinded to small pieces of concrete in order to produce a base layer for the new runway. This measure saves more than 4.000 truck journeys, since the old material does not have to be carted off. After these works the new runway is asphalted layer by layer.

• 28.04.-18.05. Asphalt works for the four layers
• 12.05-15.05. Drillings for installing the modern LED runway lights including wiring
• 12.05-15.05. Top layer of the asphalt runway will be treated with high pressure water to get rid of the sticky layer of bitumen
• 13.05-22.05. The runway receives the required markings and signs, the edges of the runway will be grassed or planted
• 22.05.-28.05. Remaining tasks and commissioning, inspections, tests and final checks
• 27.05.-28.05. Final official negotiations, acceptance of work, security area is restored
• 29.05. First landing on the new runway 15/33

Facts

• Construction time from 6:00 am until 10 pm, ancillary works during the night time possible
• The old concrete layers are used as a foundation for the new runway, which saves about 4000  truckloads of demolition materials
• 115.000 tons of asphalt will be built into the structures in 4 layers (that corresponds to about 70 football fields)
• 80 – 100 trucks will be in permanent use
• During the asphalting works a truck will enter the construction site every 3 minutes
• About 200 - 250 construction workers will be occupied at the site
• 140 km of high voltage cable and 45 km of low voltage cable
• About 1000 inset lights will be built into the structure using state-of-the-art LED-technologie
• 20 asphalt rollers will compress the various layers
• 16 km of electricity ducting