Yesterday evening I saw on the news, that Vienna airport has benn closed due to snow. Besides the fact, that this amount of snow is very unusual (something like 30cm/1ft in a few hours) here in Eastern Austria, what cought my special interest, is that the airport was at first limited to "outgoing only" before it was completely closed.

 

Now my question is, what makes landing on a snowy runway more dangerous than taking off? Is it the danger of skidding when you need to make corrections, if you weren't completely aligned with the RWY on touchdown, the danger of overrunning due to braking being less effective or am I missing something compeltely different here?

 

Thanks,

Flo

In my own opinion of course: when taking off, the goal is to gain speed quickly and get airbourne, something that a slippery surface does not greatly impede. However, during the landing phase, the goal is obviously to touch back down on land and stop, something which a slippery surface would greatly effect.

It'd imagine the "Outgoing Only" thing probably only lasted for about 10 mins to let the last of the traffic on the way out to the runway depart before they closed the runway to get it cleared. Probably more dangerous to takeoff in snow than land as in event of a critical engine failure, you're going to start skidding around like a drunken fish...

 

Regards,

Ró.

Thanks for your reply, Ró. I think from what I remember that status was for more than that (about 30 minutes at least). I could be wrong, though. That would have been more than enough time for all taxiing aircraft to leave, as LOWW isn't that large.

Thanks for your reply, Ró. I think from what I remember that status was for more than that (about 30 minutes at least). I could be wrong, though. That would have been more than enough time for all taxiing aircraft to leave, as LOWW isn't that large.

IIRC the de-icing is done remotely in LOWW (Not 100% sure, I only remember flying there in Summer times), so aircraft would have been pushed back from their stands, taxied to the de-icing area, de-iced, taxied to the runway and taken off, could easily have taken 20-30 mins depending on the backlog. Add to that it probably also took a while for them to change their status anyways, it wouldn't be an instant thing.

 

Regards,

Ró.

That makes sense. I have never flown out of Vienna in winter, and I never paid attention to de-icing equipment either, because when I flew the last time, I wasn't that much interested in aviation, but you're probably right.

Thanks a lot, Ró.