Top Flight Priorities: Creativity is crucial when building Alaska's runways.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: CONSTRUCTION

About 82 percent of Alaska communities aren't connected to the road system and 251 are accessed exclusively by air, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities. Instead, they rely on aircraft for fuel, building supplies, food, medicine, and advanced healthcare--as well as access the rest of civilization. The fundamental role airports play in Alaska is unparalleled anywhere else in the United States, making their safety and reliability absolutely essential.

The rural nature of many small communities--in addition to their reliance on air transport--creates unique challenges for engineers. contractors, and firms specializing in airport design.

"So much of Alaska is inaccessible by any reliable means other than by air, so really the option to close a runway down for multiple seasons to do a runway rehabilitation project is a no-go," says Stantec civil engineer and aviation expert Johnathan Limb. "It's just a non-starter."

In fact, the Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development's Alaska Mapping Business plan states that 79 percent of Alaska communities, incorporated and unincorporated, are considered rural, with populations of fewer than 1,500 residents.

"Over half (55 percent) of municipalities are extremely small with populations [of] less than 500 residents; 13 percent are less than 100 residents," the report says.

The primary exceptions are the City and Borough of Juneau, City of Fairbanks, Fairbanks North Star Borough, Kenai Peninsula Borough, Mat-Su Borough, and Municipality of Anchorage.

North-South Runway in Anchorage

The largest airport, an economic driver in Anchorage that employs about one in ten people in the municipality, is the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport (the world's fifth-busiest cargo airport) is undergoing its second year of critical infrastructure work after resurfacing and widening taxiway Romeo last year. This year, construction continues on one of the airports three runways--the North-South runway--and begins on another taxiway, repaving and widening the surfaces.

"The pavement of the runway has met its useful life; it needed to be redone," says Airport Manager Jim Szczesniak. "So, while we're doing this project we wanted to make sure we widen the runway to meet the FAA requirements and aircraft needs."

The need to widen the runway comes with an increase in traffic of the Boeing 747-8 international freighters. The wider runway and taxiways reduce the risk of foreign object debris, caused by jet blast, ending up on the runways and taxiways--potentially causing costly damage to aircraft.

"Jet blast is one of those things we're always taking into...