The insane heatwave going on these days finally digged a hole on runway 22 Haneda,Tokyo Japan. The hole was found on 0:30 at the noon, and the runway was closed for six hours. The runway was reportedly resumed but flight schedule mess is still continuing.

This heatwave, which raises temperature as high as 40 centigrade, plus high humidity, is expected to last next ten days. So the same thing can happen anywhere in Japan,especially in the west and south. Also those travellers coming to Japan should pay enough attention to this hotness.

Are there any photos?

When my airplane departed from HND four weeks ago very shortly into the take-off-roll we went through a massive hole, too and the nose-year nearly jumped off the ground. At least it felt like it. I was seated in 1K and thus nearly over the front gear. I thought to myself, wow, that runway is bad and needs to be resurfaced very soon. And that was before the heat wave. So yeah, if all HND runways were in that bad shape, then it is no wonder that a longer time of very high temperatures may damage a runway there which is already in a bad condition, especially in that time of the year when most airports see the highest number of movements...

(To clarify: we departed from rwy 36R or 05, but not from the affected 04/22. Doesn't change the point that their runways apparently need resurfacing.)

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

Faro wrote:

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

The question is what material did they use for the upper surface of the runway? Is it concrete? Or tarmac?

Tarmac tends to melt under prolonged very high temperatures.

HND runway 05:


Heat damage to tarmac:

Reportedly the size of the hole is 30cm x 20cm and 10cm depth. They say the surface is flaked off. No more detail is reported. In Japan almost all runways surface is what we call asphalt, though perhaps this is not the exact term. To be correct that must be a mixture of asphalt and aggregate.

Faro wrote:

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

This is the hole

That does not appear to be heat related damage. If the picture in the last post is indeed the hole cited by OP.

No official reason have been given to the formation of this hole, and report stated that a similar hole was formed on another runway of Haneda airport back in June.

c933103 wrote:

Faro wrote:

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

This is the hole

I regularly drive by potholes 2-3 times bigger than that (and a fair amount deeper) in NYC. I've occasionally hit a few, too. While it's not something I'd want to do all the time, it has never significantly damaged my car.

With that in mind I can't imagine an aircraft with multiple bogies and much larger tires sustaining any sort of damage from a hole of that size. Of course, it's better to repair it, but it doesn't seem like there's much reason for alarm.

DoctorVenkman wrote:

c933103 wrote:

Faro wrote:

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

This is the hole

I regularly drive by potholes 2-3 times bigger than that (and a fair amount deeper) in NYC. I've occasionally hit a few, too. While it's not something I'd want to do all the time, it has never significantly damaged my car.

With that in mind I can't imagine an aircraft with multiple bogies and much larger tires sustaining any sort of damage from a hole of that size. Of course, it's better to repair it, but it doesn't seem like there's much reason for alarm.

Spalling pavement poses a significant FOD risk. Something like this in a gate area would cause alarm.

The whole world seems to be under this heat wave, US, Japan, Europe

How hot is 40?

32andBelow wrote:

How hot is 40?

You mean in American temp? 104F

[*]

32andBelow wrote:

How hot is 40?

About 105F.

Samrnpage wrote:

The whole world seems to be under this heat wave, US, Japan, Europe

There are still quite some snow down south in Argentina / Chile

[twoid][/twoid]

AtomicGarden wrote:

32andBelow wrote:

How hot is 40?

You mean in American temp? 104F

Seems unreasonable that a runway would fail at that temp unless they use s totally different compound there.

DoctorVenkman wrote:

c933103 wrote:

Faro wrote:

I don’t understand...what exactly is meant by a hole...runway surface irregularity, light concrete ablation or a hole developed on the topsoil adjacent to the runway paved surface?...


Faro

This is the hole

I regularly drive by potholes 2-3 times bigger than that (and a fair amount deeper) in NYC. I've occasionally hit a few, too. While it's not something I'd want to do all the time, it has never significantly damaged my car.

With that in mind I can't imagine an aircraft with multiple bogies and much larger tires sustaining any sort of damage from a hole of that size. Of course, it's better to repair it, but it doesn't seem like there's much reason for alarm.

Keep in mind the Imagine the kinetic energy involved. A rubber tire has just taken the shock of 187,000 tons (let's assume max landing weight for an A330, common plane in Asia) at around 160 mph and hits the jagged edge of that exposed second layer. All it takes is one weak tire, and boom! you've got a blown tire (maybe more depending on where it touches down) which can cascade from there. While I am intentionally sliding down the slippery slope the point is, one hole in the runway could be symptomatic of more or however infinitesimally small of a blown something or an engine ingesting loose asphalt, airports do not play around with it.

Potholes are caused by changes in temperature, not by temperature itself.

I know potholes are not unheard-of on runways. That said, I'd have thought an airport like Haneda would have procedures and/or construction methods to avoid this.

There has been a lot of rain in Japan. It is perhaps more likely that the hole came from that. Even one of the taxiways in HKG here has been breaking up because of the prolonged rain we have had this last week (Although it is finally gone...for now).

m007j wrote:

Keep in mind the Imagine the kinetic energy involved. A rubber tire has just taken the shock of 187,000 tons (let's assume max landing weight for an A330, common plane in Asia) at around 160 mph and hits the jagged edge of that exposed second layer.

Wow. I can see how the shock of three Titanics will cause havoc to a runway . . .

PW100 wrote:

m007j wrote:

Keep in mind the Imagine the kinetic energy involved. A rubber tire has just taken the shock of 187,000 tons (let's assume max landing weight for an A330, common plane in Asia) at around 160 mph and hits the jagged edge of that exposed second layer.

Wow. I can see how the shock of three Titanics will cause havoc to a runway . . .

See this is what happens when you spend half your day with engineers and the other half with people who have never heard of the metric system before...

My mistake, that should read 187 tons, or around 374,000 lbs.

@PW100, I LOL'd at your tagline. Thanks for the laugh!

I propose we rename this thread HOLEGATE