I was just reading an article about Denver International Airport and in the article it mentioned that runway 16R/34L is 16,000 feet long. Do any flights out of DIA use the full length of this runway especially when the weather is warm?

Thanks for your responses.

Denver routinely uses 34L and 34R for departures, doesn't matter if it's warm or not.

The extra 4000ft doesn't seem to make a difference, in my limited experience, if I run into a limit using the 12,000ft 34R, switching to the 16,000ft 34L doesn't allow me to carry more payload departing from Denver.

Likely second segment climb limit comes into when the runway is that long meaning runway performance is not limiting and adding another 10,000’ wouldn’t change the max weight.

Long runways end up hitting tire speed limits, so any longer is not going to make a big difference. JNB often suffers from this especially on longhaul in the 77W

IIRC, When DIA was constructed, there was a desire to have a runway long enough to permit fully loaded flights to Europe and in certain conditions, the DC-10s needed more than 12,000'. It's somewhat rare that it would be needed now, but I do remember needing it for a DEN-EWR 737-300 flight on a quite hot day with a completely full load (including jump seats).

What if the 16,000 ft runway was a conveyor belt though?

n92r03 wrote:

What if the 16,000 ft runway was a conveyor belt though?

Well, if it was at DEN - like the automated baggage handling system - it wouldn't work anyway.

It is the longest commercial runway in the world though right?

n92r03 wrote:

What if the 16,000 ft runway was a conveyor belt though?

Lol, that was the best thread ever!

FlyHossD wrote:

n92r03 wrote:

What if the 16,000 ft runway was a conveyor belt though?

Well, if it was at DEN - like the automated baggage handling system - it wouldn't work anyway.

He He, is that still an issue? Remember when that caused chaos

[quote="71Zulu"]It is the longest commercial runway in the world though right?

According to WiKi is it BPX Qamdo Bamda Airport, at 18,045ft.
"Visitors are warned before landing to move slowly on leaving the plane and that they may feel light headed or dizzy because of the thin air."

readytotaxi wrote:

FlyHossD wrote:

n92r03 wrote:

What if the 16,000 ft runway was a conveyor belt though?

Well, if it was at DEN - like the automated baggage handling system - it wouldn't work anyway.

He He, is that still an issue? Remember when that caused chaos

No, it's not an issue any longer - they gave up on the automated system years ago. I've always maintained that it could have been redesigned and that modifications to the original system could have been made that would have resulted in a functional system. However, both the airlines and the city didn't want to put more human involvement into the system as that would have been an admission that the original design concept (fully automated) was flawed.

FlyHossD wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

FlyHossD wrote:

Well, if it was at DEN - like the automated baggage handling system - it wouldn't work anyway.

He He, is that still an issue? Remember when that caused chaos

No, it's not an issue any longer - they gave up on the automated system years ago. I've always maintained that it could have been redesigned and that modifications to the original system could have been made that would have resulted in a functional system. However, both the airlines and the city didn't want to put more human involvement into the system as that would have been an admission that the original design concept (fully automated) was flawed.

There are a couple of great engineering studied about the baggage system that I have taken a look at. The bottom line is that there was a second mistake beyond the commonly reported IT issues. The system didn't factor into it's design that the wait time for bags is typically fairly long - you drop your bag off two hours before flight, but the plane is there for only the last 30 minutes, and has a 30 minute turn around. That means of a two hour window, 1.5 hours the bag need to be in a car either on the way to, or back from the plane. The system didn't have any buffers to deal with the fact that conservatively they needed to double the number of bins then the number of bags at any given time. This "bin starvation" problem would have kept the system from working.

Go take a look at City in the Sky. They have a great section where they talk about bin storage. The amount of space you need for that is non-trivial, and would have required massive changes to the airport.

airfrnt wrote:

FlyHossD wrote:

readytotaxi wrote:

He He, is that still an issue? Remember when that caused chaos

No, it's not an issue any longer - they gave up on the automated system years ago. I've always maintained that it could have been redesigned and that modifications to the original system could have been made that would have resulted in a functional system. However, both the airlines and the city didn't want to put more human involvement into the system as that would have been an admission that the original design concept (fully automated) was flawed.

There are a couple of great engineering studied about the baggage system that I have taken a look at. The bottom line is that there was a second mistake beyond the commonly reported IT issues. The system didn't factor into it's design that the wait time for bags is typically fairly long - you drop your bag off two hours before flight, but the plane is there for only the last 30 minutes, and has a 30 minute turn around. That means of a two hour window, 1.5 hours the bag need to be in a car either on the way to, or back from the plane. The system didn't have any buffers to deal with the fact that conservatively they needed to double the number of bins then the number of bags at any given time. This "bin starvation" problem would have kept the system from working.

Go take a look at City in the Sky. They have a great section where they talk about bin storage. The amount of space you need for that is non-trivial, and would have required massive changes to the airport.

That documentary also has a bit of info on the seemingly fully automated baggage handling at Dubai. There they have a baggage storage area exactly for this case. It can hold like 10,000 bags or something (my memory is failing me on the number). All of it completely automated.

FlyHossD wrote:

IIRC, When DIA was constructed, there was a desire to have a runway long enough to permit fully loaded flights to Europe and in certain conditions, the DC-10s needed more than 12,000'. It's somewhat rare that it would be needed now, but I do remember needing it for a DEN-EWR 737-300 flight on a quite hot day with a completely full load (including jump seats).

Very need information. How many feet of runway did you need to get the main gear off the ground/how much runway was left when the 'mains' got airborne?

dfwjim1 wrote:

I was just reading an article about Denver International Airport and in the article it mentioned that runway 16R/34L is 16,000 feet long. Do any flights out of DIA use the full length of this runway especially when the weather is warm?

Thanks for your responses.

I believe Denver International was on the list of emergency landing airports for the space shuttle all those years ago. So the 16,000 FT runway was for the shuttle or heavy aircraft that need the extra runway to take off due to the thin air / high altitude in Denver.

But honesty, you watch Flightradar and you rarely see plans land on it. Some 747's used to, 777, and 767.

If an A380 ever flew into and out of Denver, it might need that entire runway to land and takeoff.

That is my best guess.

Edit** - Found this article quote.

"The new runway at Denver is 16,000 ft long, while the longest runway at San Francisco is 11,870 feet in length.. The required takeoff distance for the fully loaded Boeing 747-400 at sea level is 11,100 feet, and at Denver’s high altitude, a plane needs roughly 5,000 ft more runway to generate the required lift.
An additional need for a longer runway is based on air temperature. Warmer air is less dense than cold air, so warm air has less lift. Pilots refer to this as “density altitude.” Dry air is slightly more dense than moist air. Ideally, airplanes want to take off in air that is low (low altitude), cold, and dry."

airfrnt wrote:

There are a couple of great engineering studied about the baggage system that I have taken a look at. The bottom line is that there was a second mistake beyond the commonly reported IT issues. The system didn't factor into it's design that the wait time for bags is typically fairly long - you drop your bag off two hours before flight, but the plane is there for only the last 30 minutes, and has a 30 minute turn around. That means of a two hour window, 1.5 hours the bag need to be in a car either on the way to, or back from the plane. The system didn't have any buffers to deal with the fact that conservatively they needed to double the number of bins then the number of bags at any given time. This "bin starvation" problem would have kept the system from working.

Go take a look at City in the Sky. They have a great section where they talk about bin storage. The amount of space you need for that is non-trivial, and would have required massive changes to the airport.

Very interesting post. I'll look for "City in the Sky" and thanks for the tip.

FriscoHeavy wrote:

FlyHossD wrote:

IIRC, When DIA was constructed, there was a desire to have a runway long enough to permit fully loaded flights to Europe and in certain conditions, the DC-10s needed more than 12,000'. It's somewhat rare that it would be needed now, but I do remember needing it for a DEN-EWR 737-300 flight on a quite hot day with a completely full load (including jump seats).

Very need information. How many feet of runway did you need to get the main gear off the ground/how much runway was left when the 'mains' got airborne?

Good question, but I don't have an definitive answer. If I had to guess, I'd say it was close to 700 feet and the maximum tire speed (195 knots? - it's been awhile) was a very real concern