Reopened McCarran runway will divert flights from UNLV

By Mary Manning

Friday, April 17, 2009 | 1:54 p.m.

An east-west runway at McCarran International Airport is scheduled to reopen ahead of schedule next week and will mean fewer flights overhead at UNLV.

Runway 25L/7R and its taxiway Alpha have been closed to aircraft since Nov. 1. Contractors have been replacing asphalt surfaces with more durable concrete and asphalt surfacing, the Clark County Department of Aviation said.

As the runway was closed, thousands of departing flights were flying over UNLV, drawing complaints from some who called the university "Jet-Wash Tech" or "Runway U" because of the flight path.

The runway's reopening time will be decided next week, although it was not supposed to reopen until May 1, said Randall H. Walker, director of the county's Aviation Department.

"We've said all along this work would be finished well before the start of the summer travel season," Walker said. "Despite some wet and windy weather, and even a significant December snowstorm, the team worked night and day to get this job done on time."

Las Vegas Paving served as the project's primary contractor. Workers began preparing the site in August, three months before the runway was closed to air traffic. This advance work included building a temporary concrete plant, planning for job site entrances and exits, and erecting enough temporary fencing to separate the nearly 10,500-foot-long runway from other active runways and taxiways close to the work site.

Since November about 144,000 cubic yards of asphalt were removed and replaced with 200,000 cubic yards of concrete and another 57,500 cubic yards of new asphalt. This material amounts to constructing a 5-foot-wide sidewalk spanning nearly 790 miles, greater than the distance between Las Vegas and Portland, Ore.

Workers also replaced nearly 350,000 linear feet of conduit used to power and control parts of McCarran's airfield lighting system.

The runway project also featured an effort to recycle all of the asphalt, non-reinforced concrete, electrical cable and scrap metal removed from the work site. The asphalt was re-used at other construction sites at McCarran and around the valley, while the demolished concrete was crushed and processed off-site for use as sub-base material in other construction projects.

The Federal Aviation Administration and McCarran representatives met while the runway was closed to discuss how to make the most use of McCarran's three other runways and maintain a steady flow of flights both in and out of Las Vegas. The FAA also contributed $30.9 million toward the project's costs. The rest was financed through airport business operations, not Clark County tax dollars.