TABLE OF CONTENTS Richard Harding
Air Transportation &
Facilities Consultant
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
Airport engineering involves design and construction of a wide variety of facilities for the landing, takeoff, movement on the ground, and parking of aircraft; maintenance and repair of aircraft; fuel storage; and handling of passengers, baggage, and freight. Thus, at a typical airport, there are terminal buildings and hangars; pavements for aircraft runways, taxiways, and aprons; roads, bridges, and tunnels for automobiles and walks for pedestrians; automobile parking areas; drainage structures; and underground storage tanks. Aircraft include airplanes, helicopters, and the anticipated tilt rotor aircraft. Airport engineers have the responsibility of determining the size and arrangement of these facilities for safe, efficient, low-cost functioning of an airport.
A runway, the most essential component of an airport, enables landing and takeoff of airplanes. For all but the crudest airports, it is a paved strip. Many airports have more than one runway to accommodate aircraft landing and taking-off at locations where winds vary significantly in both direction and speed. Parallel runways are two runways laid out in the same direction to accommodate operations when the capacity of a single runway is exceeded.
Taxiways provide a convenient means for aircraft to enter and exit a runway. They are usually paved strips connecting runways with each other and with aircraft parking areas.
Parking aprons are typically paved areas adjacent to terminal buildings, storage hangers, aircraft maintenance hangers, and other buildings that pilots use as an approach to...
