With
the increased growth of air travel into South Florida, and in
particular Miami International, officials at Ft Lauderdale Hollywood
International Airport and Broward County embarked on a massive
project to increase capacity. Breaking ground on January 23, 2012,
the project started to expand the previous general aviation runway
9R/27L to a six story elevated ramp runway to reduce flight delays at
the airport and to keep up with increasing traffic demands into the
area. The main reason for the ramping of the runway is to
accommodate the current highway US-1 and the railway lines that
currently run along the eastern side of the airport. It is not
possible to relocate these transportation thoroughfares, so they will
run through tunnels under the elevated runway.
Previously,
runway 9R/27L was 5,276' x 100' and with the expansion will increase
to 8,000' x 150' that is due to open in September 2014. Along with
the expansion of the runway, the taxiways on the main north side
runway 9L/27R are being increased to a full-length 75' wide taxiway
and additional capacity of other taxiways on the airport to be able
to cope with the increased capacity. A new expanded long-haul
international terminal will also be constructed and additional
capacity to the other terminals create that will ncrease gate
capacity from from a total of 66 to 97 gates. The current cross
runway, 13/31 will be closing in May 2013 and will be permanently
decommissioned.
This
new runway project is sure to attract more international air traffic
to Ft Lauderdale as well as provide increased capacity for general
aviation as well. The first sign of this new attraction is the
announcement by Norwegian Airlines that starting November 29, 2013,
they will institute two flights a week from Copenhagen and Stockholm.
Initally announced to utilize leased A340 equipment, once the halt
to commercial Boring 787 flights is lifted and Norwegian receives
their Boeing 787s, that equipment will be used on the routes.
To
take into account of the increase in general aviation traffic, FBO
operator Sheltair has recently completed a multi-million dollar
project to expand new hangar capacity close to the new runway. Other
FBO operators are looking all looking at projects to increase
capacity in their own operations.
One
of the major efforts that is going into the contruction of the runway
is the importing or masses and masses of dirt to fill in the space
for the elevated runway as well as for the new runway. Dirt is
brought in by train and then moved to the construction areas by
truck. However, getting the dirt from the train trucks to the road
trucks is bringing out some novel methods, including the positioning
of the loaders in the train trucks as sohown in one of the pictures
below.
September
2014 is going to be a very exciting time for Ft Lauderdale
International Airport. As the photographs taken March 28, 2013 show,
construction is well under way on the runway expansion and the new
hangars at Sheltair are nearing completion.
A
full version of the FAA impact study that details the full expansion
can be viewed at
http://www.faa.gov/airports/environmental/records_decision/media/rod_fll09_main.pdf
A Delta Boeing 757-200 landing on the soon to be decommissioned runway 13/31
The new hangars at Sheltair nearing completion
US highway 1 and the railway tracks - the reason for the elevated runway
The novel way of getting dirt from the train trucks to the road trucks - the loader in the train truck!
Some more time spent behind the camera lens....
