Traffic at Prague Airport returns to main runway after 3 months
The only systemic solution is constructing a parallel runway, airport management says.
Air traffic at Prague Airport returned to the main runway 06-24 Thursday after more than three months of suspended operations. The airport has been using the secondary runway 12-30 since the end of March. This was due to regular maintenance and repairs of the main runway and reconstruction of the adjacent taxiway B.
The secondary runway is almost perpendicular to the main runway, with traffic directed over the densely populated parts of Prague and Kladno. The runway was in operation at its full length of 3 250 meters. The direction of traffic on the secondary runway depends on current meteorological conditions, especially the wind. The airport prefers aircraft land and take off in a northwesterly direction.
The airport management are aware that using the secondary runway inappropriately increases traffic over densely populated areas. They see construction of a parallel runway as the only systemic solution for the future. However, that has been repeatedly delayed and the airport management currently expects a parallel runway to be completed by the end of the decade.
Planned runway layout at Prague Airport.
Edited and translated by Lucie Trávníčková.