Air traffic at onset of winter
In winter, it comes to runway closures again and again if only during the duration of clearing and controlling procedures.
Air traffic is strongly affected provided that temporary runway closures for above mentioned activities last between 10 and 60 minutes. In case of strong onset of winter, flights will be cancelled and in extreme case the complete air traffic will even be stopped.
The temporarily used snow-removal technique and the used machinery can not guarantee running air traffic in winter. Countless incidents have been proving that year for year.
Leaving the runway "unintentionally" after landing (aircraft overrun) is the most common cause for accidents. 53 % of the accidents occur as a result of slippery and contaminated runways.
Alone in 2008, there were 27 accidents worldwide caused as a result of leaving the runway unintentionally after landing.¹
The additional expenditures occurring in addition to that are enormous.
In an ideal situation, air strips will be used in summer as well as in winter at full capacity, i. e. air traffic in summer and in winter will be nearly the same.
¹ Gerard W.H. van Es, Marc Tauss, Kristjof Tritschler - Development of a Landing Overrun Risk Index, NLR, Netherlands, lecture at EASS of Flight Safety Foundation, March 2009, Nicosia, Cypress
The patent-registered snow-removal procedure (abbreviated: SRP) executed with snow-removal mobiles is guaranteeing a runway condition, also in case of extreme weather conditions, hardly deviating from the summer conditions of a wet runway. *
* Note: Only the completely integrated snow-removal procedure is guaranteeing the described condition. A permanent clearing action (integrated clearing action in lateral direction) using the runway for approx. 1 minute by an aircraft and then using the runway for approx. 1 minute by the snow-removal mobiles.