Published on June 22, 2025 1:50 AM GMT
I recently flew through CLT and spent more time delayed than in theair. There were summer thunderstorms, and with the lightning it wasn't safefor workers to be out. This meant no loading, unloading, docking, refueling,anything. On the way in we sat on the tarmac for 3hr waiting for lightning tolet up; on the way back we sat in the terminal (much better) while the incomingflight suffered through our prior fate.
Ground delays due to electrical storms are common, and each minute of closureis extremely expensive for the airlines in addition to being painful for thepassengers. We don't stop inside work when there's lightning, why can't weget the same protection for ground workers? This is something we know how todo: give the electricity a better path to ground.
We could build grounded towers, about 100ft high, and run a grid ofcables between them. Cover the area adjacent to the terminal, whichis the only area you need people working outside. While this wouldn'tbe worth it all airports, the ROI at a high-closure airport likeOrlando, Dallas, or Miami would be only 3-4 years. In 2008,Heitkemper et al. (Lightning-WarningSystems for Use by Airports) estimated that reducing ramp closureduration by 10min after an area strike would have saved $6.2M summer2006 at ORD and $2.8M MCO. Let's try to get an annual estimate in 2025 dollars:
Annual savings would be moderately higher (perhaps 20%), sincethis number is just Jun-Aug and there's some lightning in the off season.
We're also talking about reducing the delay from 30min all theway down to 0min, which should give roughly 3x the savings.
Planes are scheduled and filled more tightly than they were in 2006,increasing the cost of cascading delays. Guessing this is an increaseof 30%.
Traffic is up 70% at MCO between 2006and 2024,and 25% at ORD.
There's been 60% inflations since 2006.
Taken together, the annual cost savings of eliminating lightningclosures would be ~$36M at MCO and ~$58M at ORD.
The cost of installing a system is hard to say, but it's a matter ofbuilding grounded towers about 100ft tall (above the tails of thetallest planes) and running cables between them. Everything is muchmore expensive due to being at an airport, but if you're doinghundreds of gates perhaps figure $300k/gate. Then MCO with its 129gates would be $40M and ORD with its 215 gates would be $65M.
With annual savings in the same ballpark as installation costs, thiswould be excellent ROI. And even if it costs five times what I'mestimating here it's still well worth it.
Am I missing something? None of this is new technology, ground delaysdue lighting have been an issue as long as we've had planes, thisseems like the obvious solution, and it could have been done anytimein the past ~75 years. Is it more expensive than I'm guessing? Notprotective enough? Hard to fit the towers in without getting in theway of moving the planes? Impractical to dissipate this muchelectricity into the ground without generating hazardous steppotentials? Demonstrating safety to the satisfaction of OSHA andunions impractical? Airports have to pay but airlines get thebenefit? Only recently became worth it as increased loading anprecision has increased the cost of ground delays?
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