Winter services

The winter service team at Dresden Airport was deployed to its first large operations this season last weekend. Now that the runway is 350 metres longer, the area to be cleared has grown by about 12 per cent to 543,100 square metres, which compares to an area of 76 football pitches. 140 employees from traffic operations and technical departments and PortGround staff have been specially trained for the winter service.

The winter service team at Dresden Airport operates 24 hours a day in two shifts and works closely with the German Air Traffic Control, the airport's operations office and the German Meteorological Service. One officer-in-charge, one operations officer, two group leaders and 14 drivers are all on standby during every shift. The winter service is on call from 1 November to 31 March.

Following the principle of "ploughing, sweeping, blowing away", the winter service team clears snow and ice from the aircraft parking positions (245,000 m²), the runway (171,000 m²), the taxiways (90,600 m²) and the peripheral road (36,500 m²). Up to seven jet-sweeper trailers, one mono-plough, two 320-hp rotary snow ploughs with a 30 metre range, one gritter and salt spraying vehicle and one surface friction tester are deployed. This testing vehicle is used to measure the friction values on the runway regularly.

Mechanical clearing methods take precedence over other methods for environmental reasons. However, if the surfaces do ice up then traffic areas are gritted with around 50 g/m² of flame-dried quartz sand. Under extreme conditions, it is also permitted to de-ice the runway with "Clearway 1", a potassium acetate with a concentration of around 50 %, which smells of vinegar.

Snow and ice is removed from the wings and tail unit of the aircraft before take-off. A fully bio-degradable mixture of glycol and water is sprayed by special vehicles onto the aircraft at a temperature of 60-80 °C. The waste water then runs off together with the other surface water into the sewer system of the airport. The decision whether or not an aircraft needs to be de-iced is taken by the captain of the aircraft.