Wind-whipped snow slows Logan recovery
Think you had it tough shoveling your driveway this weekend? Try clearing more than 21 miles of pavement up to 150 feet wide without using rock salt, while steering through an open field with few visible landmarks to distinguish asphalt from grass.
Crews at Logan International Airport faced those challenges Saturday night, Sunday, and into yesterday, after a blizzard dropped 24 inches of snow on the ramps, taxiways, and runways and as howling winds produced whiteout conditions across the airfield. Logan closed for 29 hours, its longest shutdown since the Blizzard of '78.
This time around, the intensity of the storm was so great that the airport's operator, the Massachusetts Port Authority, received permission to dump snow directly into Boston Harbor for the first time since 1978. Usually snow is trucked off or melted on site and purified of contaminants including de-icing fluid before being piped into the harbor.
The storm also triggered a snow removal plan that requires using plastic instead of metal blades to protect runway lights; sculpting snowbanks to no more than a foot high at the edge of the runways so aircraft engines and wings can clear them; and giving runways a braking test with a specially-built Saab automobile. Yesterday, crews finished clearing taxiways with oversized snow blowers and pushed already-plowed snow into pits where it was melted at the rate of 60 tons an hour.
The intricacies of airport snow removal help answer the question -- asked yesterday by Governor Mitt Romney, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and others -- as to why Logan remained closed so long after highways were opened to traffic.
''If you don't do a good job on the turnpike or your driveway, the worst thing that will happen is you get stuck and you have to get on your cellphone and call somebody to pull you out," said Craig P. Coy, chief executive of Massport, as he sat with airport officials yesterday in the control tower. ''The worst thing here is you have an airplane full of people, traveling at 150 miles per hour, get into trouble. We cannot have the risk of failure that you have on the turnpike or a highway."
Logan was closed from 3:01 a.m. Sunday until 8 a.m. yesterday. It didn't open a second runway until 11 a.m., just an hour before a transformer fire in Chelsea cut power to the airport for 55 minutes, further delaying some stranded passengers and producing long lines in security.
The same storm closed T.F. Green Airport in Providence for nine hours. Manchester International Airport in New Hampshire remained open, although its airlines canceled most flights Saturday night and Sunday morning. Both airports, however, were on the fringes of the main snowbelt. Logan also dwarfs the other two, both in size and in the number of daily flights.
At Logan, crews initially tried to keep open one runway, 4Right/22Left, as well as a single entrance and exit taxiway, but eventually the snow began falling at a rate of 2 to 3 inches per hour. The wind also produced whiteout conditions.
''It's not like you have street signs or lights that are elevated that give you a sense of where you are," said Massport's aviation director, Thomas J. Kinton Jr.
The crews returned Sunday afternoon, at which time they shifted their focus to Runway 33Left/15Right, which had the proper wind direction for takeoff and landing. That was opened at 8 a.m yesterday. By 11 a.m. yesterday, Massport opened Runway 9/27. The crews then returned to Runway 4R.
''When you open a runway, you don't just open a runway; you open all the connecting areas, all the turnoffs, and all the ramps that accommodate the airplanes," said Massport spokesman Phil Orlandella.
Each runway cannot be opened until Massport performs a braking test with the special Saab, which lowers an aircraft tire through the floor of the car and measures how much traction it gets. That data must meet one of several parameters set by the Federal Aviation Administration, which also dictates the height of airport snow banks, as well as which materials can be used to improve traction. Salt cannot be used because it corrodes the aluminum used in aircraft. The granules can also damage planes.
Orlandella estimated the snow-removal cost at $15,000 per inch. Kinton shook his head. ''This is a budget-buster," Kinton said.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. 