Auckland Airport chief executive apologises for runway closures
Wednesday, 19 February 2020
Auckland International Airport says it was too slow carrying out urgent maintenance on its runway leading to long closures on January 24 and February 6.
The runway closures caused disruption to flights, and prompted Transport Minister Phil Twyford to call the airport's management to brief him.
It also prompted an international pilots association to issue an advisory to pilots warning of foreign debris risks when landing at Auckland Airport after it received reports of pieces of broken concrete up to 30cm by 30cm and 12cm thick being on the runway.
Chief executive Adrian Littlewood said a review of the closures 'confirmed the safety of the runway and its maintenance programme', but apologised to passengers whose flights were disrupted.
The airport released a report on its handling of the runway closures on Wednesday, which said the runway closures were 43 and 68 minutes respectively, longer than the 20 minute-period that should have been required to carry out the maintenance work.
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It blamed a combination of factors including the time taken to assemble specialist tools, and the methods chosen to remedy the faults.
'The review identified ways in which we could have improved our response times, which we have acted on,' Littlewood said.
The section of the eastern 'touch down zone', where the two recent faults occurred, had already been planned, budgeted and scheduled for replacement as part of the airport's upgrade programme, Littlewood said.
Another small section of runway had also been scheduled for replacement within the next five years at the western end of the runway.
'Auckland Airport has been consulting with aviation authorities and independent experts on planned runway works,' Littlewood said.
'Design and procurement are already underway for long-lead items and new jet blast deflector fences to protect work sites during runway works.'
The airport's preferred time for the maintenance was September.
'Like all airports, we do have to occasionally close the runway outside scheduled maintenance closures for safety reasons such as drone sightings or clearing debris, but provided the closures are of short duration there is usually very little impact on flights,' Littlewood said.
'There are approximately 180,000 flights per year and 500 flights per day at Auckland Airport. As a single runway operation, the runway is available more than 99 per cent of the time according to publicly reported annual reliability data,' he said.
Longer unscheduled maintenance outages were rare, with four unplanned closures of longer than 15 minutes since January 2018, including the two most recent closures, he said.
Airport staff had met with the minister in Wellington to brief him on the closures, and had been keeping him informed by phone, he said.
The review report says faults could occasionally occur in runway pavement, which was 450 millimetres to 500mm thick, and could be more common in extended periods of dry and hot weather due to increased thermal expansion of the concrete.
'Independent experts have said the unusually hot and dry weather Auckland has experienced this summer contributed to the faults occurring,' it says.