Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Think it's tough keeping your driveway cleared of lake effect snow?
When it comes to clearing lake effect snow off the runways, the team at Buffalo Niagara International sets the gold standard.
"We pride ourselves on achieving a higher level of service here, second to none," says Joe Guarino, the Buffalo Niagara International Airport Airfield Superintendent, who also mentions that they've won 7 Balchen/Post awards since his tenure as superintendent for outstanding achievement in airport snow and ice control. "We pride ourselves on raising the bar every day, doing better than we were yesterday."
The equipment used are new to the airport and when they put their five new machines work together, they are an unstoppable force, "We have new equipment now, which has changed the dynamic of our snow removal efforts. They're called multitask equipment, or MTEs for short. They do the work of two pieces of equipment with one unit one person can operate versus two," Guarino explains.
"These things (MTE's), they have 24-foot plows, 22-foot brooms and high speed air. When they go down their runway surface, our taxiway behind them, the pavement is bare, for the most part and they can do almost the full width of the runway. The runway, which is just short of 10,000 feet, we could do it in 10 to 12 minutes and be off and let the aircraft land," says Guarino.
Guarino also notes that they have a snow and ice plan but procedures need to change depending on the changes of snow and temperature you're dealing with, "No snow event is the same. We could start out with temperatures, say 22 degrees. Even if it's heavy snow, it's very light because it's cold, it's dry snow and then towards the end of the event, we could be at 31 degrees, now you got heavy, wet snow, so conditions change, and we need to change procedures out there. So we might need, for instance, more snow blowers, they're called rotary plows, the big blowers, real large ones that can throw snow hundreds of feet away from the runway and we may need to use them more if we get heavy, wet snow."
Many flights are currently being cancelled at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport currently from all major airlines including Southwest, jetBlue, Frontier, United, Delta and American. See here for more information.
