El Dorado International airport was built in 1953 and since then, the airport has been renovated to adapt to the fast rhythm of aviation. The following paper will summarized important information regarding the airport 's airside and an analysis will be done to see if the current procedures and airport configuration is meeting the current and future needs as well as the capacity levels to operate in an efficient way.
El Dorado Airport Airside
Runways
Originally, El Dorado International Airport was planned with one runway. In 1995, the airport was at its full capacity so the government decided it was time to build a second runway. Currently, El Dorado has two runways: 13L/31R and 13R/31L.
Runway …show more content…
El Dorado Airport is one of the highest airports in the world at 8.360 ft. Additionally, right in front of the airport the Andes Mountains are an evident and very dangerous geographical obstacle. These two aspects are limitations for the airport because due to the high altitude, airplanes do not perform well and have to make more effort to takeoff. Moreover, just three types of aircraft can takeoff at maximum takeoff weight and most of the transoceanic flights takeoff with 70% load capacity that is not very attractive (El Universal, 2013). An attractive solution would be to extend 13L from 3.800 m to 4.700 m to improve the takeoff load capacity of long flight to 97% (El Universal, 2013). With that extension, a new taxiway would have to be constructed to connect both runways near the thresholds of runways 13R and …show more content…
Nevertheless, the city began to grow without control and people starting invading the areas next to the airport. Today, the airport is in the city and the community is constantly arguing because of the noise and because of the mandatory trajectory over the city that airplanes have to do when taking off. This is a very delicate matter because only certain noise restrictions can be put into practice as to not affect the capacity and efficiency of the airport but it would be impossible to move the airport to another place as millions have been invested for its renovation and also because to the west of the city there are many natural reserves that environmentalist and ecologist are willing to defend at any