OREANDA-NEWS. October 18, 2011. As part of its comprehensive effort to prepare for the upcoming winter navigation, Vnukovo International places particular emphasis on the regular status checks and mandatory upgrades and maintenance of its airfield maintenance mobile equipment. Since this fleet of vehicles will be at the forefront of the Airport's snow and icing removal operations throughout the season, a great deal of effort has gone into its impeccable upkeep and operational readiness. To learn more about the specifics of this work and of Vnukovo's preparedness for any vagaries the weather might have in store for us this winter, we have spoken with Mikhail Belousov, Vnukovo International's Head of Airfield Maintenance.

- In a standard runway snow and icing clearance operation we normally employ a conga line comprised of a mix of seven sweepers and snow blasters fitted out with brushes, hot air blowers, 7.5 meter-wide snowplows and snow blaster chutes respectively. Since the plows are normally attached at the carrier vehicle's front and have to be installed at an angle, the clean swathe of runway surface the vehicle leaves behind is 5.5 meters in width. We therefore have to line up seven vehicles in a stepped diagonal formation, all with a slight overlap of the areas of runway surface they will be working on. A conga line's trip up and down the runway leaves it clean and ready for the flight operations using it to continue as normal. The entire cycle takes around twelve minutes. In the event any of the vehicles involved in runway clearance operations breaks down, or is temporarily out of commission due to refueling or maintenance needs, we have a standby fleet of vehicles to draw upon, to wit the ones normally employed in our apron clearance operations. Our average fleet age is five to six years with the operational guidelines calling for a vehicle's operating life of ten to twelve years, therefore giving us plenty of safety margin and confidence in our equipment. We also do our utmost to make sure all of our vehicles are in good working order.

Apart from the mobile equipment I have already mentioned, we also make extensive use of mobile liquid and granulated deicing agent spreaders and even as we speak, the Airport has in place a sufficient stockpile of deicing agents to ensure proper winter maintenance of all of its operating areas such as aprons, taxi strips and runways. A single runway clearance requires around 4.5 tons of deicing agent on average, with the highest expenditure rates normally occurring in December and January.

In our snow clearance operations we also make use of vehicles carrying a mix of brushing and snow blasting extensions, a number of milling and rotor-based snow loaders and blasters, tractors, front loaders and other specialized equipment and transport. This year we have more than seventy pieces of such varied powerful equipment standing by and ready to take on any weather-related challenges. Therefore, no matter how severe the weather is going to be come winter, we are completely prepared to assure the Airport remains fully operational through it all.