London Luton Airport Taxiway Bravo Project
London Luton Airport Taxiway Bravo Project
London Luton International Airport is currently the fifth busiest airport in the UK, and it is essential that the airport is able maintain its forecast growth. This airport boasts being Britain’s most popular for business and private jets, but it is also an extremely busy base for the low-cost airline industry.
The growth in passenger numbers has exceeded expectations and as a result of this, changes were needed in the taxiway routing infrastructure. A new taxiway route, ‘Bravo’ leading from the apron to the 08 runway end was constructed. This route contributes to maximising more airfield movements all helping to accommodate the expected 18 million passengers per annum by 2020.
Atg airports Turnkey Solutions team were contracted to install the electrical requirements needed to ensure the new routing system met with all safety standards and necessary lighting requirements for a CAT III operations.
The electrical solutions included the installation of new Airfield Ground Lighting (AGL) circuits including all the cabling, jointing, transformers, switching units, and other associated equipment. Within the substations there was a requirement to add new power supply feeds for the additional constant current regulators selected from the Micro200 range of CCR’s, along with associated supply breakers. New stopbar fixtures were installed on the taxiway routes along with, taxiway centreline lighting, utilising the IR range of LED lighting fixtures. The Clearway brand of LED taxiway guidance signs were installed, along with the Apollo runway guard lights.
As new services had been installed, all these were required to be controlled and monitored from the air traffic control position, thus requiring the airfield lighting control system to be modified. Management of the system upgrade was performed by the turnkey solutions project manager and prior to change over, the complete system was required to be tested to ensure correct functionality.
Where there is construction work required, there is always some disruption to the airport’s movements. However, to ensure that these were kept to a minimum, all the electrical infrastructure was installed over period of 20 consecutive night shifts.
Luton airport is now safely lit and has more space to service its growing passenger numbers. With plans to improve surface connections by building a new rail link between the airport’s Parkway station and the terminal, Luton looks set to continue flying high. We are proud to have played such a vital part in the successful expansion of an increasingly key UK airport.
