AOT (Airports of Thailand) finally begins taking steps to repair runway at new airport
After five months of internal and external investigations, international headlines, and resignations of top-level executives, Airports of Thailand (AOT) finally demonstrated remedial action in an attempt to halt the spread of fissures that have resulted in the closing of a section of the airfield.
“It’s critical that we discover how to extract this water before the rainy season returns,” said AOT senior engineer Surajit Surapolchai. “There are 46 areas in the airfield with water blockage in the sand underneath that caused damage to the pavement surface.”
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Ultimately, it is assumed that all three million square metres of Suvarnabhumi will likely need to be drained before ruts and cracks consume the entire airfield, he said.
“The cracks continue to spread. We have no way of knowing the extent of the damage yet but, all the taxiways, taxi lanes and aprons could be affected,” said another airport engineer, who asked not to be named.
The excess water is caused by the failure of the airfield’s drainage system to move water away from the paved surfaces, and/or a lack of drains under the paved surfaces.
This certainly doesn’t sound encouraging:
Neither AOT officials nor the international consortia of airport designers and contractors responsible for the airfield’s design and construction have been willing to comment on how such an oversight could have happened.
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