Runway Potholes Are A Dangerous Development At Any Airport. One Regional Airport Makes Quick Work Of Them With EZ Street Cold Asphalt
Roanoke is a city in Denton County, Texas. It’s part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. There’s an old hotel in Roanoke that once hosted Bonnie and Clyde in the 1930s while they were on the run. But if you’re on the fly, the first place you might see is Roanoke’s Northwest Regional Airport.
A privately-owned, public-use airfield northwest of town, Northwest Regional Airport averages more than 400 aircraft operations per day. With that much use, wear and tear is inevitable—and is equaled by a desire to maintain the facilities. That includes dealing quickly and permanently with repairing runway potholes and taxiway potholes. As pilot Mitch Whately says, “If you’re taxiing in at night, and your nose gear drops down into a pothole, you’re risking a prop strike. Which is not just the prop, that’s the engine, too. So there’s a real incentive to make sure we don’t have potholes.”
Now waiting on the tarmac at Northwest Regional Airport: EZ Street cold asphalt. When it comes to taxiway pothole repair and runway patch, this is just what ground control ordered. As Mitch says, “The idea here is to fill them in, and eliminate the problem as permanently as we possibly can.” As soon as a pothole appears, one man can easily toss EZ Street asphalt straight into the hole, compact it, and have the runway or taxiway safe and open again in minutes. And the repairs are guaranteed permanent.
EZ Street asphalt is more than just a quicker, easier, more cost-effective repair. It’s also a key component in safe airport runways and taxiways.
