How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Airport (PART 1)

Arlington Airport 5/13/23. Photo courtesy Carl N.

OK, so the title may be a tad hyperbolic, and the airport may not be "ruined", but it is undoubtedly being made less functional and less efficient than it was.

It is said that these changes need to be made in order to bring the airport in line with current FAA and state guidelines so that the airport can continue to receive federal and state funds for maintenance and upgrades. This is a good thing. As it existed in the before, there were large ramp areas with marked "runup boxes" at both ends of the main runway 16/34. The taxiways intersected the runway in a non-standard fashion. How was it non-standard? In that it worked, was convenient and offered options when an inconsiderate individual did his level best to block the whole thing for everyone.

OK, OK, in FAA speak in was non-standard in that the taxiways didn't intersect the runway at a 90 degree angle. OK, I don't understand why that is a thing, but supposing that it is, there are other ways to accomplish it without giving up as much real estate as they have.

They started with the south end at the end of April, finishing that up about mid-June. They are now resurfacing the main taxiway, taxiway A, between the two ends and will begin destruction, I mean construction at the north end on July 7, 2025. The whole thing should be ruined, I mean finished, by the end of August.

Since it was the first to be completed, I will begin with the south (34) end.

34 (south) end before changes (also known as the good old days).

Looking at the picture above it is clear to see that for one thing, the taxiway does not intersect the actual end of the runway at any angle, right or not.

Before continuing, look at a few of the features of the current arrangement. The airplane that is sitting just outside of the runup box is indeed a Vashon Ranger, for those of you who were wondering.

Taxiway A is seen going off to the right of the frame about in the middle. The big flat thing with all the paint on it is the actual runway, but that's not important that right now.

Close up of runup area.

The above image is intended to show some features of the old runup area. If you look closely, you can see a yellow dotted line box at the bottom end of the paved area. That is the runup box. In a perfect world, pilots would pull into this area, turn parallel to the runway, pulling as far over as they can so as to leave room for other airplanes, and then exit the box when complete to the taxiway at the top of the paved area. The Ranger is sitting on the taxiway, out of the runup box, waiting for his turn to go. Good boy.

Runway connectivity.

The way the old setup sat, it was easy to go from the runup area, across 34, and take off on 29, for whatever reason one might want to to that. I often did.

You can also see from the photo above that on the west side of the runway, taxiway C does intersect with the runway at a 90 degree angle, thus they are not changing that side. This arrangement also allowed plenty of room for airplanes wanting to come across the runway from taxiway C to move down Taxiway A. The space was big enough that airplanes could move in opposite directions at the same time.

Poor outline of glider landing area.

There was one drawback in that part of the runup box was right under where the gliders would be landing. Most of the time, this was no problem, they would go right over the planes in the runup area. There could be situations, however, where a glider could be short on energy and come in lower than expected and create an issue with an airplane below. Since they can't add power and go around, they have to do the best they can.

You can see from the picture second from above that there is a couple of hundred feet of runway from the the taxiway on A1 to the actual end of the runway. Normally this isn't an issue, but if someone needed the full length, they would have to back taxi a couple hundred feet.

The original plan with no runup area at all.

The first plan that I saw, shown above, called for a new taxiway A4 with no place to do a runup at all. Notice that the hold short line has been moved all the way back to Taxiway A, before even making the turn onto Taxiway A4. The only way to do a runup here would be to do it right on the taxiway, and you just know that a large number of people will turn so that their prop-wash is directed right at those hangars.

Carl first sent me those plans in March of 2024 and I sent them to everyone I could think of. It just so happened that Carl was having lunch with some friends at Ellie's and present was one of the Airport Commissioners. Carl mentioned the plan to him and he said he had never heard of that nor seen the plans. Just then, one of the airport employees walked in and was told about it and claimed to have not seen any plans nor know anything about it. Fortunately, he did go talk to others and they came up with the change shown below.

The final plan that was implemented.

At least the final plan included some semblance of a runup area, but it is about the least convenient runup area that could be put in, particularly when there was a perfectly good runup area that already existed and could have been just modified a bit.

As previously stated, destruction began on April 30 and that weekend I went out to survey the damage. On the one hand, what they were doing looked just like the plan but, on the other hand, as previously stated, the plan sucks.

Beginning of the first phase.

Already a lot of dirt has been moved.

The above pictures were taken on 5/3/25. They had already done a lot in just 3 days. The ground eye view does show some of the details of the work but doesn't really give a good idea of the scope. Fortunately, the following weekend I was able to fly and got an aerial view of the damage.

After just 8 working days.

They started with the area farthest from the runway since the area right up to the runway required closing the runway. As you can just see in the photo above, runway 11/29 goes across the south end of runway 16/34 and very near the work area, so while much of that work was done, runway 11/29 was closed. For the work closest to the main runway, 16/34 had to be closed as well. The whole airport ended up being closed for 6 days and 11/29 for more than that. At least they reopened everything on the weekends. That made it less of a burden for me, but wasn't much relief for other folks.

After 18 days of work.

I didn't fly on 5/17, so 5/25 was the next time I had a chance to look in on things. The initial tear out was complete in the first part of the work area and the final construction had begun. This was shortly before the runway closures began. Runway 11/29 was closed from 6/9 through 6/24 and 16/34 was closed 6/11 through 6/18. Again, that was just weekdays, they reopened for the weekends. The 11th through the 18th was the only time period that the whole airport was closed. Runway 16/34 was again closed on 6/26 and 6/27.

6/7/25 after 27 days of work.

I flew again on 6/7/25 and the construction area didn't look a whole lot different.

6/14/25 after 32 days of work.

By 6/14 the first set of runway closures had happened and they were now working on the areas closes to the runway.

You can see in the photo above a tow plane and one of the gliders on the middle section of grass. Ordinarily, when operating to the north they would take off from the center section and land on the south section. During the construction, the south section of grass where they usually fly is closed and they have to land and take off both from the middle section. While this is doable, it is more difficult to manage than the old way of doing it.

Once the construction is complete, I don't see how they can safely resume landing on the now smaller south section of grass. I fear they may have lost that option for good.

By 6/28/25 the work at the south end was complete.

I didn't get to fly during the last week they working as I used that time to finish moving out of my old hangar. By the time I got to fly again, 6/28, the work was complete. Since much of Taxiway A is still being resurfaced, most traffic still has to cross 16/34 and come down Taxiway B, so we don't yet know exactly what it will be like once the whole taxiway reopens and activity returns to abnormal.

Note in the picture above that the two runways no longer connect anywhere at all. While it is still possible to taxi across 16/34 and gain access to 11/29, it cannot be done nearly as easily and it can't be done at all if there is anyone else sitting there waiting.

By the way, the green paint on the taxiway above is labeled on the final plan as a "No Taxi Island". Want to bet how long it remains so?

So there is the story of the ruination of the first part, the most commonly used part, of the Arlington Municipal Airport.

You may be thinking that I am being unfair in my criticism of the people that made the decisions that led to these changes. Perhaps that is true, but I don't think so. The first problem is that there are no pilots, let alone aircraft owners, involved with the planning or implementation of this or other such projects at Arlington. If there were, I feel that different decisions may have been made.

If indeed the goal was to get to a condition where the runways intersected the runways at 90 degree angles, that could have been done with considerably less demolition.

Very poor attempt at editing the original final plan.

One thing they could have done to meet the requirements is to build the new Taxiway A1 as they did, but leave the original runup area intact. They could have even dig up a small area, such as between the original hold short line and the edge of the runway so that people can't enter the runway except from the new Taxiway A1. This would have required much less dirt moving, should have taken less time and therefore, also cost less.

If the planning process had included pilots and people familiar with operating at the Arlington Municipal Airport, I feel confident that a more user friendly solution could have been reached that would have had much less of a detrimental impact on airport operations for years to come and who knows, maybe we could have saved a little bit of public money in the process.

While the final product is far from idea (very far), it is a whole lot better than what they came up with in the first place.

More pictures can be found here.

Be sure to stay tuned for the next exciting installment where we learn how they are going to screw up, I mean modify, the north end. Same Bat time, Same Bat channel.