Flughafen Munchen starts planning approval proceedings for third runway

(CAPA) Flughafen München GmbH (FMG), the Munich Airport operating company, formally applied on 24-Aug-07 to the District Government of Upper Bavaria to start planning approval proceedings for the construction of a third runway.

With the application, FMG submitted detailed documentation of the reasons for the planned expansion project, including 30 explanatory reports, specialized papers and expert reports. Key elements of this documentation are the air traffic forecasts, the configuration analysis for the site of the runway, capacity calculations, and the environmental report. The application documents are contained in 47 binders with over 10,000 pages and 500 plans and maps.

In its application, FMG is seeking approval to implement runway variant 5b, which the state planning authorities ruled compatible with regional planning objectives in the spring of this year. The preferred 5b variant was filtered out of an original pool of more than two dozen potential sites. It has an axial displacement of 1180 meters to the existing northern runway and a so-called threshold offset of 2100 meters.

Under the 5b variant specified in the planning approval application, the airport can achieve its capacity target of at least 120 schedulable take-offs and landings per hour and guarantee smooth handling of the projected air traffic volume for the forecast horizon of 2020. This will ensure Munich Airport’s ongoing development as a major hub and air transportation centre at the European level.