Monday, September 12, 2011

Airplane Cuts Ribbon to Re-open Runway

At most ribbon-cutting ceremonies, the tool of choice is a pair of scissors. At Addison Airport in Texas, the instrument is an airplane flying 15 feet above the runway.

Addison Airport recently re-opened its 7,200-foot-long runway. To celebrate, acrobatic pilot Jan Collmer flew his plane down the runway and used a wing to cut the ceremonial ribbon, which was stretched high above the pavement. Trailing a cloud of white smoke, Collmer dipped a wing as he flew by the ribbon, successfully cutting the material in two. Town of Addison Mayor Pro Tempore Blake Clemens accompanied Collmer in the plane.

Addison Airport posted a ribbon-cutting video. (If you have trouble viewing it, right click on the video and turn HD off).

Addison Airport is one of the busiest general aviation airports in Texas and the United States. Garver's engineering services on the $10.5 million project involved full-depth runway reconstruction, high-intensity runway lights, runway guard lights, hold position signs, a medium-intensity approach lighting system with runway alignment indicator lights, and an airfield lighting control and monitoring system. Improvements were also made to the runway safety area and airfield drainage. To put this project into perspective, it involved:

1,263 truckloads of asphalt. If you lined up the dump trucks bumper to bumper, the traffic jam would stretch longer than 7 miles.

157,700 square feet of runway and taxiway paint. If you painted a 4-inch-wide line, it would stretch 181 miles.

38.5 acres of seeding and 38,900 square yards of sodding.
This is enough to cover 35 NFL football fields.

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