Winter road veterans

Winter returned in full force this week. Oslo Airport is prepared – with 130 employees distributed among 5 on-call teams – ready to clear away the snow. "We have plenty of staffing in place from 15 October and until the Easter traffic has died down," says head of section Thomas Toftevåg.

Many people thought that spring was on its welcome way, at least until earlier this week when the snow returned with a vengeance. Oslo Airport has kept delays to a minimum, with 25 employees on each on-call team who are ready to get rid of the snow as soon as it hits the ground. In addition to this, there are approximately 52 contractors with 150 people dedicated to specified areas on the airside and landside who are called out if the precipitation is of such a scope that our regular resources need assistance.

"Considering our climate here in Norway, it is important that we are always well-prepared, no matter what the winter weather brings. Every day is equally important, and we are always well-prepared," says Toftevåg.

Open airport, even when it snows
If the snowfall demands maximum resources, we can mobilise three ploughing teams with a total of 41 machines in operation in the central area, taxiways and runways. We have 28 people performing winter maintenance at the aprons and on the internal airport roads. Outside the fence, Oslo Airport has around 10 people working hard to make sure that both passengers and airport employees get where they need to go on the winter roads. The total area they are in charge of amounts to 3.3 million square metres.

When a runway is released for maintenance, it is ploughed in its full width, and all adjacent exits and taxiways are also cleared. When one runway is prepared, the ploughing crews move on to the next one. While all this is taking place, other taxiways, aprons and other areas must be kept open so that the aircraft can move to and from, without delays. The crews keep on ploughing and clearing until the snowfall stops. Capacity is somewhat reduced when the ploughing is in progress, but aircraft can still continue to take off and land at the airport.

Snow doesn't always behave
Sometimes, snowfalls can be extreme. That can make it difficult to keep air traffic running, even with all machinery and crews at work. We had an example of this last year, on 26 March, when Oslo Airport was forced to close both runways to all traffic for two hours.

"That was a challenging day because of the large volume of heavy, wet snow that fell over a very short period of time, and we were unable to keep air traffic running. Although such events are extremely rare, we are obviously not satisfied with such situations. In the aftermath of that day, we have evaluated the steps that were taken and have prepared a plan aimed at ensuring that we can keep some traffic moving throughout such difficult winter conditions," says Toftevåg.

Continuous improvement in winter operations
A number of major international airports have arranged study trips here to see how we handle all the snow, precisely because we have succeeded in keeping traffic moving, even on days with heavy snowfall. Nevertheless, Ground Staff has no intention of sitting back and resting on our laurels.

"We will do a better job on winter operations every single year. We will learn from our experiences in previous years, spend our summer months on good maintenance and repair of our machinery and equipment, and do a lot of training in the autumn before the snow starts to fall. At the same time, we will test new and more effective solutions. This year, we have tried out some machines on biofuel. The preliminary experience indicates that this does not have a negative impact on machine capacity," concludes Toftevåg.