Winter operations
Left: Aberdeen’s snow plan begins mid-October, whereas many other UK and European airports may only see four months of such weather.
Opposite page: Oslo Airport can see significant snowfall from November, with winter operations continuing into March and April.
can start seeing days where where both slush and wet snow might fall. Oslo’s winter operations continue all the way into March and April, with particular importance placed on the Easter bank holiday – once that has passed, capacity begins to be tuned down. However, Toftevåg notes that in a recent year, Oslo saw 10cm of snow on 11 May, lining up with Paterson’s experiences at Aberdeen. Over the course of the entire winter season, Oslo might see anywhere between 2–2.5m of snowfall – but then he has seen a day or two where 45cm of snow has fallen in 24 hours. With this in mind, it’s clear that it is far from easy to keep winter operations running at full capacity over this considerable span of the year. Altogether, Aberdeen’s airside operations team consists of 18 people in total, and it’s up to them to keep Aberdeen’s manoeuvring area clear – including the taxiway infrastructure and the airport’s runways. Oslo, on the other hand, employs 21 employees for basic manning, with the ability to increase numbers up to 60 depending on the weather forecast. It’s staff are etc., and its staff are similarly dedicated to keeping the airport running under the harshest weather conditions. During the winter period in 2017–18, however, one of Oslo’s two runways were closed 816 times in total – but as Toftevåg explains, this leaves out some key context. “We don’t like to use the word ‘closed’ because we aren’t really closed – we have two runways. [In these cases,] one is just temporarily out of operation,” he says. The main objective at Oslo is to ensure that none of these closures last longer than 15 minutes – something that the airport has an excellent track record at managing. Indeed, since 2010, there have only been 12 instances where this has happened – and none since the winter of 2016–17. Even under-15-minute closures have fallen steadily year-on-year since that 2017–18 high, dropping all the way down to 318 closures in the 2021–22 winter period. This is due, in part, to Oslo having become very good at predicting how much time it’ll need for runway closures when dealing with specific weather conditions, enabling it to notify air traffic control (ATC) and passengers on expected closure times, reducing unnecessary delays. This has been made challenging, however, by the increasingly unpredictability of weather conditions
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– something both Toftevåg and Paterson highlight. “If you get a weather prediction that it is going to snow 5cm at 7°C, if it’s 5cm or 8cm, who cares?” says the former, noting that difficulties arise when dealing when dealing with temperatures that are on the edge of freezing, between 1°C and -1°C, leading to uncertainty over what tactics should be pursued. “If we were going to put on [de-icing] chemicals every time they said ‘risk of freezing rain’, it wouldn’t be good environmentally or economically.” Timing is also vitally important – personnel involved in de-icing the runway must ensure that the chemicals laid down don’t get too watered down by falling rain or snow. “If we knew there was going to be freezing rain at Oslo Airport, we would want to have 30–45 minutes to do all of our preventive measures,” he adds. If the weather forecasts come too late and the runway freezes over before de-icing operations can begin, then the real trouble begins. Oslo has adapted to the challenge, however, by incorporating sensor data from nearby areas, combining the weather data of nearby ski slopes and other locations with wind direction to anticipate incoming weather conditions. Aberdeen, meanwhile, has contracted a company called StormGeo, to provide greater accuracy and reliability with its weather predictions, focusing on forecasts up to five days in advance of operations.
Assemble the winter fleet To overcome these challenges, airports typically operate a fleet of vehicles and equipment for winter operations, for the purpose of removing fresh snow from the runway, returning it to ‘black top condition’, according to Paterson. At Aberdeen, this involves using towable jet sweepers and a snowblower behind them, driving the sweepers next to each other in a row of four down the runway, with a snowbank forming on each side. “We’re only allowed about 30cm of snowbank, dependent on the taxiway profile,” explains Paterson. “So, we run our snow cutter over the top of it, which projects [the snow] into the grass areas so that we are left with no physical snow on the pavement.” The airport also makes use of tractors outfitted with
-10ºC Met Office 33
The recorded temperature at Glasgow Airport on 2 December 2023, with snowfall leading to flight cancellations and delays as aircraft were grounded.
Aberdeen International Airport
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