Circular Runways - A Smart Idea

Dutch scientists offered a smart solution to decongest the runway problems in Airports all over the world.

Ever since Wright Brothers created their innovation ‘flying machines,’ plenty of ideas emerged to fine tune the airports across the globe. But runways have been built in the same old fashion – innovation-less and always congested.

In this backdrop, Dutch Scientist Henk Hesselink’s team working with the Netherlands Aerospace Centre has come up the definitive plan to disrupt the very idea of ‘runway structure.’ They gave a smart solution in the form of circular runway – a 360 degree landing and take-off strip measuring more than two miles in diameter will radically change the way we think about runways.

Labeled as ‘endless runway,’ this idea gives flexibility for the flights to take off from any direction around the proposed circular space. The problem of crosswinds also smartly avoided in this method. Moreover, three plans can able to take off or land at the same time.

The design team used flight simulators and computerized calculation to test this novel design and found round runways would be more efficient than existing straight ones. The centrally located terminal buildings, the overall airport would only use about a third of the land required with the same airplane capacity. Above all, the distributed nature of flight paths gives only less noise. Now, the research is in the final leg and we can expect some real working model in the near future.

By
Srini