"DIA launches 3-mile-long runway"

Friday, September 5, 2003

DIA launches 3-mile-long runway
Airport seeks to lure more foreign flights
By Jeffrey Leib
The Denver (CO) Post


Denver International Airport's new 16,000-foot sixth runway should enable
Denver to attract nonstop service to Asia and additional flights to Europe. 

That was the view of officials from Denver and the Federal Aviation
Administration as they heralded the runway's opening for commercial traffic
with the departure of United Airlines Flight 244, a Boeing 777 bound for
Chicago.

The new $166 million runway "opens up DIA to the rest of the world," Mayor
John Hickenlooper told about 100 celebrants who clogged a taxiway near the
new runway to cheer the inaugural flight Thursday morning.

The crowd included United pilots and other airline workers, contractors who
built the runway and federal officials who contributed about 74 percent of
the construction cost.
  
Four F-16 fighters from the Colorado National Guard flew in a diamond
formation at low altitude over the runway just before the start of
commercial service. The jets were piloted by United fliers on duty with the
Guard.

The runway, at 16,000 feet long and 200 feet wide, is the largest commercial
airstrip in North America and one of the largest in the world.

DIA's other five runways each measure 12,000 feet in length and are 150 feet
wide.

Denver's high altitude places some limitations on service to faraway
international locations.

But the extra length of the new runway, 34Left/16Right, and the higher
speeds that planes can achieve in using it for takeoff, should help make
international service to distant destinations more feasible from Denver,
said United pilots Kirk Reinhardt and John Barton, who gathered with many of
their fellow fliers to salute the departure of Flight 244.

Reinhardt and Barton, Denver-based leaders of the Air Line Pilots
Association's local council at United, said the union is eager to work with
the Hickenlooper administration to lure more international service to DIA.

Daily nonstop service to and from an international city pumps between $25
million and $142 million annually into the local economy, Hickenlooper said.

"This definitely improves the economic feasibility of daily nonstop travel
to international destinations," Hickenlooper said, just before he officially
opened the runway.

The new runway also will speed the flow of aircraft in and out of DIA,
especially in bad weather, said Turner West, one of the airport's
co-managers.

On another issue, Hickenlooper said Denver is doing everything it can to
accommodate Frontier Airlines' need for more gate space at DIA.

On Wednesday, Frontier officials said they will need at least four
additional gates by the end of the year.


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