LaGuardia reopened one of its two runways on Thursday after crews fixed a depression in the pavement, a dip reported at around two inches deep. Two inches matters because of what lands on it: a fully loaded passenger jet touching down at 150 miles an hour.
Runway 4/22 was shut down and all of the airport’s traffic was squeezed onto the single remaining runway. That meant delays, cancellations, longer lines to take off, and gates clogged with planes that could not move. If you flew in or out of Queens this week and your flight fell apart, this is a likely reason.
By the accounts of the outlets covering it, this was the second time in less than a month that the same pavement problem forced a closure at LaGuardia. Two closures in a few weeks points to a cause older than any of the planes using the airport.
LaGuardia was built out over the water on fill, the made ground of an old shoreline. Ground like that settles and shifts in ways solid bedrock does not, and the reporting on this closure pointed at that landfill-based geology as the backdrop for the repeated pavement issues. The runway is sitting on top of a century-old engineering bet.
This is not an emergency for any single traveler. The runway was inspected, the depression was caught and fixed, and the airport went back to normal operations. The concern is the frequency. A surface that needs an unplanned closure twice in a month points to a long and expensive future of maintaining this airport.
If you fly out of LaGuardia this summer, build in extra time, especially on a single-runway day, and check your flight status before you leave for the airport rather than after you are stuck in the taxi line on the Grand Central.
Featured image: Photo by Jeff Yapalater
