California’s Ontario airport on 20 March will reopen a 3,700m (12,200ft)-long runway that has been fortified to handle Airbus A380 aircraft.
Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), which operates Ontario airport, closed runway 08L/26R in May for a $50 million reconstruction. The project involved repaving and resurfacing the western 10,200ft of the runway.
This segment was “in an area we had severe rain and flooding, and engineers determined there was a potential for a weakening of the runway’s structure,” LAWA’s director for air service marketing Mark Thorpe tells ATI. It was also reinforced to handle A380 aircraft, he says.
The eastern 700m segment was deemed structurally sound and not needing repair or reinforcement, says Thorpe.
Taxiway construction to accommodate the A380, which is part of the reconstruction project, is ongoing. Other elements of the project include removal and replacement of asphalt, electrical vault, markings, runway lights, signage, and taxiway intersections.
LAWA was unable to provide a completion date for the project.
Australian carrier Qantas next year is expected to be the first carrier to operate the A380 into Los Angeles (LAX). As a reliever airport for LAX, Ontario needs “to provide for the A380 accordingly”, notes a spokeswoman for the airport.
However, Ontario’s first scheduled A380 operations will be for cargo. Thorpe says UPS is expected to be the first carrier to have scheduled operations with the ultra-large aircraft out of Ontario.
A UPS spokesman confirms the airline has been in talks with Ontario. But he says nothing has been finalized regarding A380 direct operations from the facility.
“We won’t have any A380s until 2009,” says the spokesman. “The A380 could fly direct [out of Ontario], but there may be more benefits to continue flying into Anchorage and [transferring cargo for flights to Asia] using one A380 rather than a couple [McDonnell Douglas] MD-11s.”
Source: Flight International
