Construction of Snow and Ice Runways

This chapter reviews the design and construction of polar skiways and runways using snow and ice as geomaterial. Current snow and ice runway options include (1) unprepared skiways; (2) groomed skiways; (3) compacted snow runways; (4) sea ice runways, and (5) blue ice runways. Ski-equipped planes can operate on all types of snow and ice runways, whereas wheeled aircraft cannot land safely on unprepared and groomed skiways. A tendency in recent decades has been to use snow and ice runways for landing conventional wheeled aircraft. Sea ice runways are excellent for wheel operations in springtime; however, they cannot be relied on for summer and autumn operations over the long term. At present, hard pavement can be made on compacted snow, making polar regions accessible to a much wider range of conventional aircraft. Also, a few alternative construction methods are briefly discussed at the end of the chapter. Although these methods are found to be theoretically viable, all of them are currently considered to be impractical.