Pearson Airport runway ready for takeoff after $80M makeover

If you've taken off or landed at Toronto's Pearson Airport since the spring, you've seen a giant construction site out your tiny plane window.

Crews have been ripping up and rebuilding Runway 06L/24R, the second busiest runway at the airport — and one of the busiest in Canada. Instead of planes, the three-kilometre long stretch has been packed with excavators, loaders and dump trucks.

Closed since early April, it reopens Friday.

Simon Ho has been overseeing the $80-million rehabilitation project — one of the biggest in the airport's history.

"It's an incredible feat," says Ho, a project manager with the Greater Toronto Airports Authority (GTAA), as a symphony of construction equipment whizzes by him — paving, spreading and compacting asphalt on the final stretch of runway.

The air reeks strongly of tar and asphalt, while planes roar overhead every minute or so. The ground rumbles beneath Ho's feet — both from the construction and the aircraft.

The rebuild is not far from one of Pearson's active runways, which Ho's team had to carefully consider. Crews must stay a certain distance away from the planes. A team of sweepers has to continually clear construction dust and debris. One of the major worries is stray objects getting sucked into aircraft engines.

Ho's still trying to wrap his head around just how massive the runway is, even though he's been working on it for months now. 

"You just kind of get the sense that you don't belong there," he said. "When you're standing there, that's where you really realize this thing is huge."

Runways need special asphalt

The renovated runway, one of five at Pearson, was built in 1960s. It has been worn down by decades of weather and planes landing on it.

Crews have been building it back up from its base and were able to recycle pieces of the old runway. 

But you can't just use regular asphalt you see on highways. It's specialty asphalt for airports — with jet fuel resistance and the ability to hold an aircraft's weight, over and over again.

• LISTEN | Here and Now heads onto the rebuilt runway:

The airport says the closure did not contribute to the chaotic delays it experienced over the summer — when it held the title for the highest number of delays in the world, according to the flight tracking service FlightAware.

"It really didn't impact too much of the overall capacity through the airport because it was just careful planning," says Stuart Bricknell, in charge of engineering, architecture and construction for the GTAA.

He says that included working with airlines and Nav Canada to spread out flight schedules more.

Bricknell likes to geek out over planes taking off, stopping to take pictures and call out the type of plane (his favourite is still the Airbus A380). So he's excited to have the runway back in action.

"There are no test runs," he says. "The first plane that lands on it will be the test run."

He's hoping the air traffic controllers will let the pilot know they are landing on a brand new runway. 

"I'd be very, very excited to be landing in that first plane."