Guidelines for North Runway Use

Under the Minister of Transport's operating restrictions for the north runway, the north runway can be used for departures when the airport approaches capacity limits. Using the north and south runways for simultaneous departures reduces significant delays for aircraft and their passengers.

Determining When to Use the North Runway for Departures

The Airport Authority has developed a guideline to predict when departures on the north runway will be necessary to prevent delays. Using graphs, we show the total number of departures and arrivals scheduled at YVR during each hour of the day. For example, the graph below shows the scheduled traffic for Thursday, August 17, 2006.



With YVR's current runway system, aircraft delays reach an unacceptable level when either arrivals or departures total 35 to 40 an hour, or the number of combined arrivals and departures totals 60 to 70 an hour. As the graph illustrates, these totals are forecasted to be reached at several times during this day.

In general, this pattern is seen across the entire summer schedule. Using this as a guideline, we forecast the need for departures on the north runway during peak periods between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. The guideline also shows rush hours on the weekends. Because the rush hours tend to be less severe, in the interest of balancing community and aviation needs, we will only use the north runway as necessary on weekends to reduce delays.