Airport Drainage Solutions

In Soviet times all international flights from outside the USSR had to land at Moscow’s
International Airport Sheremetyevo. Other destinations were only reachable by transferring to a domestic flight, departing from either Sheremetyevo National, Domodedovo or Vnukovo. After Domodedovo was privatised it was the first airport that started competing for international flights offering better services and facilities, and today it has outgrown Sheremetyevo with many international carriers having switched to it. A few years later the Moscow-owned airport Vnukovo followed the Domodedovo example, focusing mainly on low-cost carriers (LCC). Today Moscow is a very important national hub, and its importance as an international hub is growing rapidly. As a result there are now three international airports around this city of 10 million people with a total of over 40 million passengers per year, and in competition with one another they all have to meet ever higher technical standards. Perfect and durable drainage systems on runways, aprons and taxiways are a part of that standard, and MEA has delivered channel systems to all three of them. Take for example Vnukovo, it has been equipped with almost 8km of drainage channels (EN2000, EN3000, EN4000 and F900 gratings). For months, a procession of MEA lorries travelled back and forth between Zelhem and Moscow. This represents a distance of over 5,000 km for every return trip! The comparatively recent surge in the economy of the biggest country in the word – it is more than 11,000 km from Moscow (in Europe) to Vladivostok (in Asia) – also resulted in a tremendous growth of direct international flight connections with other cities throughout the country, and more and more airports that seek to meet all international standards. This means that numerous other airports will be modernised and of course MEA will play an active part in that.