New Civil Engineer
Tom Pashby
07 January 2025
Ice and snow led to temporarily closed runways and delayed flights at Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester and Aberdeen airports today (7 January 2025), but there are measures that could be taken to ensure their continued operation, a resilience expert told NCE.
...the UK has a history of mild winters so UK airports have “limited experience with severe snow events”.
“Resources such as de-icing equipment and trained staff were insufficient to cope with the sudden weather intensity,” according to Royal HaskoningDHV head of sustainable aviation and resilience, Vivekanandhan Sindhamani. He also said “tight operational schedules” left little room for flexibility.
Looking abroad, Sindhamani recommended UK airport resilience planners look to examples like Schiphol in the Netherlands and Munich in Germany.
For the UK, airports should “invest in advanced weather monitoring systems to enable early warnings and proactive measures” and “train staff regularly to respond to extreme weather events and involve all stakeholders in preparedness drills”, Sindhamani said.
He said they should also “design infrastructure to include redundancies and weather-resistant features to ensure business continuity”.
