Global passenger air traffic increased 9.6% last January, the largest increase in five years. With climbs like that, it is not surprising that there are those who are looking for possible solutions to the congestion already suffered by airports around the world. Among them is that of the aviation expert Henk Hesselink, from the Netherlands Aerospace Center, who is committed to the creation of circular runways to expand airport capacity .
The Endless Runway, a name that, translated into Spanish, would come to mean “the endless runway”, it would allow airplanes to take off and land from different points of this circular runway, with which the wind factor would cease to be important , and the pilots They would no longer have to do their maneuvers in a crosswind – in these cases, the prevailing wind is perpendicular to the runway, which requires a lot of skill from the pilot.
In fact, Hesselink’s compact and radical proposal was born after watching videos of planes landing with crosswinds – at Bilbao airport we have already seen on occasion how the planes had to land half on their side due to those winds.
Environmental benefits
This type of runway, by preventing the aircraft from intense crosswinds, would allow savings in the fuel consumption of the aircraft . It would also imply less noise pollution: since there is the possibility of flying from any direction and to any direction, it would be decided which territories to fly over and which ones not (avoiding populated areas, for example).
The length of The Endless Runway would be equivalent to that of three runways today, although, according to its creators, it could respond to the operational needs of even four conventional runways. Also, up to three planes could land or take off at the same time on one of these circular runways.
Its diameter would be 3.5 kilometers , large enough to provide, according to its creators, enough space for the terminal, which would preferably be inside the circle.
Imagen: The Endless Runway
