Runway work, clouds delaying some flights

Spokane airport officials say they hope to finish repaving the airport’s main runway in about 10 days so flights that run into bad weather won’t be prevented from landing here.

From noon Sunday to early Monday, seven Spokane-bound flights were unable to land on time or were forced to land elsewhere because of low clouds and because they could not land on the main runway, said airport spokesman Todd Woodard.

The seven commercial flights were diverted to Seattle, Moses Lake or Missoula, but all eventually landed after the clouds had lifted over the Spokane airport, said Woodard.

The latest flight touched down in Spokane after 2:30 a.m. Monday, he said. There were no weather-related delays Monday night.

Some flights were three hours behind schedule. “We understand this is a major inconvenience for our passengers,” said Beth Harbin, spokeswoman for Southwest Airlines. Two Southwest flights were delayed Sunday. “It’s outside our control,” Harbin said

The runway work is scheduled to end several weeks before the onset of morning and evening fog patterns that usually disrupt some airport traffic.

But it was low rain clouds, not fog, that bedeviled airline flights over the weekend, said Woodard.

“We had a period of low clouds that remained over the airport, starting about noon Sunday,” he said.

The forecast for the next week is for light showers. Paul Bos, meteorologist with the Spokane office of the National Weather Service, said the pattern will include winds that will keep cloud patterns moving through the area.

Airport officials say the main runway should be back in service well before the busy holiday flying season.

Clouds and fog normally pose no problems for planes that land on the airport’s 9,000-foot-long main runway. That runway has an instrument landing system that lets planes land as long as a pilot can see a minimum of 700 feet ahead.

Since June, crews have been replacing the top 3 inches of the main runway’s asphalt layer, grooving the surface and adding painted stripes.

Airport officials say all the asphalt has been laid and that more than half the runway has been grooved. They expect the full job to be done by the end of October, at the latest.

Until then, inbound flights must land on the shorter, alternate Spokane runway that has no instrument-guided landing system, said Woodard. On that runway, the government requires pilots to land only when there are no clouds below 400 feet and if they can see a full mile ahead.

While it was mostly rain clouds that disrupted traffic this weekend, the airport has also seen some flight delays during days of morning fog, said Woodard. But those morning delays, so far this year, have been short, he said.

“Typically, planes coming in will circle for a while until the fog lifts,” he said.

The project manager of the company overseeing the runway job said he hopes the work is finished by Nov. 1. Even while forecasts predict a week of rain, project manager Dave Larsen of Taylor Engineering said the runway grooving should proceed normally. The grooves are needed so water won’t pool on the runways.

But the final stage of painting stripes and runway numbers could fall behind if rain and strong winds continue, Larsen said.

“If we tried to paint runway stripes this past weekend, we’d have had problems,” Larsen said. “It was so windy the whole runway would have ended up white.”

Because of chancy weather, Larsen said he can’t guarantee the job will be done in 10 days.

“We were out there working (on grooving) even this past Sunday,” he said. “We know the airport wants us to get this done. We know it’s urgent. We hear about it from them nearly every day.”