wonder how the airports clean heavy snow

i think they use snow blowers that..... erm....blow it away 😀

Trucks? I've seen a picture of a truck removing the snow off the runway.
It was an Airlines.net picture, but since there are millions of them I can't find the picture.

Yeah i think that they mainly plough the runway, i dont think they spray anything obviously as if this was to solidify into an ice, then landing would be extremely dangerous, if not impossible. After ploughing it i do not know if some sort of grit is put on it.

ploughing does a lot damage to pavement....
runway pavement is very expensive

nottobe wrote:

ploughing does a lot damage to pavement....
runway pavement is very expensive

That's right.

Tartanaviation wrote:

Yeah i think that they mainly plough the runway, i dont think they spray anything obviously as if this was to solidify into an ice, then landing would be extremely dangerous, if not impossible. After ploughing it i do not know if some sort of grit is put on it.

salt can ruin the jet engines, can corrode aluminum, and sand is a nightware since it can be sucked into the jet turbines

Thanks for those links fourby.

I found this one particularly informative ➡

First of all the snow is cleared off the runway. Any snow not removed by the snow plough is sucked up by the cutter blowers and then blown to the side of the runway. The snow walls at the edge of the runway are blown (hurled) by a snow blower (900 hp) about 40 meters away from the runway.

De-icing of operational surfaces
The airport takes care of the mechanical clearing of the snow with ploughs and cutter blowers and also the chemical de-icing of operational surfaces and aircraft. Urea, chemical de-icing fluid which are 100% bio-degradable.

I heard that under the runway pavement there are heaters that make it so the surface of the runway is always above freezing, so the snow/ice will just melt into water. I could be wrong

Think you are right robbier, some airports do have runway "under floor" heating.

I think I saw an episode of the Red Green show where Red taught us to make a driveway heater. It was pretty funny 😂

Back when I was going to disney (mid winter) we had a pretty bad snow storm that night and out on the tarmac (did I spell that right) they had these BIG machines that melted the snow and turned it into steaming hot water and they just let it splash out. So I am guessing that they uses some sort of frontend loader (this was at KHPL Philly)

-Nick