snow hopkins.JPG
The airport has a fully-staffed team of 117 people to operate its fleet of 60 snow removal vehicles. (Photo: Ginger Christ/The Plain Dealer)
CLEVELAND, Ohio - This winter, traveling to and from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport should be a little easier.
The airport, buoyed by federal grant money, has made changes to its snow removal process that should reduce delays and make traveling safer.
"I think passengers are going to see the difference here," Fred Szabo, interim director at Hopkins, said Friday during a press event.
Ideally, the improvements will reduce wait time for planes trying to land and increase on-time arrivals.
The airport now has a fully-staffed team of 117 people to operate its fleet of 60 snow removal vehicles, which wasn't always the case in the past.
Where the airport used to staff its snow team based on weather predictions of snow, it now will bring in a full staff when there is even a chance of a trace of snow.
"Anyone who lives in Northeast Ohio knows that weather predictions are not always accurate," Szabo said.
That should allow the airport to be ready when any inclement weather hits Cleveland.
Because of the area's lake effect snow, wrangling winter here is a different beast than in other cold weather cities.
That's why the airport staff has worked with airports in Buffalo and Chicago to determine best practices for snow removal in areas that battle with the unpredictability of lake effect snow.
"You really have to talk to an airport that has similar conditions as we do. We have lake effect snow in Cleveland, and that's the one issue that is the most difficult to accommodate."
With the new equipment Hopkins was able to purchase with federal funds, teams now are able to clear runways in half the time. For example, the snow crew can clear an 11,000-foot runway in 20 minutes.
"Clearing an 11,000-foot runway is a pretty significant advantage to us," Szabo said.
Hopkins also now is coordinating its snow removal efforts with the Federal Aviation Administration, which operates the air traffic control tower, and the airlines to clear runways when there isn't a lot of traffic in the air.
"That way, when you're approaching a cold weather airport in the wintertime, you'll do a straight-in approach. You don't have to circle; you don't have to wait for the teams to get off the runway," Szabo said. "We've really reduced any wait time significantly... An aircraft can only wait for a certain amount of time because of fuel, and we're sensitive to that."
Szabo said snow removal at Cleveland this year will be very similar to what happens at airports across the country.
"Basically, the tactics of snow removal are nationwide. We all do it the same way," Szabo said.
However, airport preparation can only go so far. If a bad enough storm hits, airlines will cancel flights.
"In a really heavy snow storm situation, you'll find fewer aircraft are actually flying at that time when it's really coming down," Szabo said.
In those cases, the airport might reduce its airfield to the size needed to accommodate the number of planes flying in and out.
"It doesn't make sense to plow the entire airfield when you're not using the entire field," Szabo said.
And sometimes, the amount of snow falling is just impossible to clear. If it takes 20 minutes to clear a runway and two inches of snow is falling per hour, within 40 minutes that runway will be covered again, Szabo said.
"You have to understand, there are some storms that are very difficult to keep up with," Szabo said.