Meet the snow fighters of Washington Dulles Airport and Reagan National Airport! A lot goes into snow removal and each airport has to approach it differently. We sat down with Jonathan Zimmerman and Doug Helms to talk about how they lead the snow removal teams and how things differ between DCA and IAD.
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Staff:
Tanisha Lewis, VP of DISI
Jaimini Erskine, VP of Marketing & Concessions
Charles Wilson, Co-host/Co-producer
Amanda Ohbayashi, Co-host/Co-producer/Social media producer
Ryan Burdick, Editor/Co-producer
Bong Lee, Graphics
Brian McCoy, Digital Strategy/Co-producer
Sagia Depty, Marketing Lead/Co-producer
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[00:00:04] Amanda: I'm Amanda.
[00:00:05] Charles: And I'm Charles.
[00:00:06] Amanda: This is The Capital Runway podcast.
[00:00:09] Charles: Hey, Amanda, how are you?
[00:00:12] Amanda: I'm well. How are you, Charles?
[00:00:16] Charles: It's almost springtime.
[00:00:17] Amanda: Oh my gosh.
[00:00:18] Charles: I say almost springtime. We may get another 30 degree.
[00:00:22] Amanda: No. No, no. We are not speaking that into existence. I hope not.
[00:00:26] Charles: I hope not. I hope not. In years past, it has snowed in March and April.
[00:00:31] Amanda: No. No, no. No, no. [laughter] Give me all of the 60 and 70 degree days with all of the sunshine.
[00:00:39] Charles: I'm with you. I'm so ready for springtime and summer.
[00:00:42] Amanda: I'm ready for the spring. By the time we get to summer, I am over the hot summer, and I am ready for winter, but I will enjoy these lovely temperatures for now.
[00:00:54] Charles: I am never ready for winter, but I will always enjoy an extra hour of sunlight.
[00:00:59] Amanda: True. Well, speaking of winter, this year we've had quite a lot of snow at our airports.
[00:01:07] Charles: Yes. We're going to be talking to the team today that is responsible for clearing the runways and making sure flights are on time and that passengers are safe.
[00:01:17] Amanda: Yes. I'm really excited about this conversation. I think that what they do is so important and yet goes unnoticed by so many people because they're just focused on their flight. These guys help make it so that we can get on our flights [unintelligible 00:01:32].
[00:01:32] Charles: Yes. They work very hard and a lot of times are unrecognized. I look forward to learning more about them and what they do.
[00:01:37] Amanda: Me too. Let's get to it.
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Today we have a very fun episode. We are talking all about snow.
[00:01:49] Charles: Who doesn't like talking about snow?
[00:01:51] Amanda: [laughter] Well, we have some experts here. We have Jonathan Zimmerman representing Team Dulles and Doug Helms on Team DCA. Welcome, both of you.
[00:02:02] Jonathan: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:02:04] Doug: Thank you for having me.
[00:02:04] Charles: All right. Great. Let's go ahead and get into it. We'll start with Jonathan. If you can tell us a little bit about your role and what you do at Dulles.
[00:02:12] Jonathan: Yes. I am the acting deputy manager of airport operations at Dulles. At Dulles Airport in our airport operations department, the deputy manager has the primary responsibility for organizing and planning a lot of our training and operations concepts and clearing concepts associated with snow on the airport. Dulles is a very big airport, as many of your listeners are probably familiar with, and there's a lot of snow to clear there when it snows. The role involves a lot of the planning concepts and training that prepare our team both in the ops and the maintenance side for the season ahead.
[00:02:54] Charles: Great.
[00:02:55] Amanda: Doug, I see you over there nodding. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what you do at DCA and how snow training works there?
[00:03:02] Doug: Yes, pretty similar. Thank you. I'm a utilities manager for DCA and a snow director for DCA maintenance group. Pretty similar to IAD's training, but we've incorporated doing it all at one time because we only got one runway here at DCA. We're not as fortunate as IAD to have multiple runways. It's hard. We're trying to build in to get more training.
We do have new equipment arriving, which is going to help tremendously, but we're similar to how IAD operates it. We try to get them out there as much as we can to get familiar with the airfield because you go through so many different scenarios because each snow is different. We take care of street side and airfield with just the maintenance crew here at DCA.
[00:03:52] Jonathan: The thing I was going to add to that is maybe some of that difference between Dulles and Reagan, a little bit more. Doug was already alluding to it. They have some very specific challenges, which he's the expert on. I'll let him speak to it. The size, a lot of it comes to it, there's unique challenges to Dulles on the opposite end of that scale, for whereas getting out and clearing a lot of the field is very challenging for them. For us, it is challenging because my airlines don't par down the schedule because it's a big airfield.
I'm running a 100% operation with full snow blowing, and so our team is operating and trying to clear. During a snow event, we prioritize certain runways. We drop from four to three, and our go-out-of-the-gate is keep three runways in a single parallel taxiway and at least two high-speed or acute angle exits off each runway. You go into the storm with those as your strategic objectives, and you adjust that to what your fall rate is. We have a lot of that-- particular challenge of Dulles is doing that while everybody's running a full schedule. It's not shut the whole airfield down and nobody bothers us.
We've got to do that juggling planes. You're a constant ballet of how much delay you do to those airlines because we've still got to get the field clear. They can't take the runway if it doesn't meet standard. While at the same time not delaying them so bad because they've got chemical on the wings and that has a certain holdover time. They got to get off the ground before the chemical is no longer good for the snowfall rate. There's always a balance between getting the work done and prioritizing not too much impact for the airlines. That's the particular challenges of Dulles. It's really centered around size and busyness for that size.
[00:05:42] Doug: Here we've got one runway, 119, and that's it, especially during a storm or anything like that. We can work hot. We've got different breaks that we'll get in with the tower. If we're just doing a chemical treatment, we'll do a 30-minute treatment, get out there while they're still taxiing. If it's a broom operation, we get out there, I think it's 45 minutes that we'll do 119. We only worry about with 119, and I can say only worry about, we worry about all the taxiways, but during a storm, we want one way on and one way off.
If they're flying north or south, we want a north exit and a south exit, which is typically on 15 and 4 is our exits coming off of 119. It's challenging at times, especially when the airlines are moving and everybody's out there. You're trying to get a snow crew of five, six, 10 people out there in between flights, and you can sit there for a couple hours in the whole bay waiting to get out on the runway to do something. Once that contaminant is on the runway, you have to act. You have to get out there and do something. Yes, there's different challenges for each airport.
[00:06:51] Amanda: The team that gets called in, are they volunteers from other teams or are they just dedicated to snow training or snow clearing? How does that work?
[00:07:00] Doug: Everybody in maintenance is required.
[00:07:03] Amanda: Okay. It's just the maintenance.
[00:07:05] Doug: Yes. Is required to work snow. We break it up into two teams. We have orange team and a blue team. That way there's six on and six off.
[00:07:14] Charles: You mentioned that each snow is different. Besides how much snow, what are some of the factors that you guys have to consider?
[00:07:22] Doug: Yes, I know here at DCA, because everything seems to come east, and we've got the river right there. If the wind's blowing, it's kind of different. When you get a storm, you got a light snowstorm. The first snow we had, I think it was 6.4 inches, was a real fluffy, light snow. Really easy to move. You can blow on it. It just moves out of your way.
Most of our big storms that we get are heavy, wet snow, which are difficult to move. Here at DCA, as you see the footprint of our airfield, we have no place to put snow. We have to remove the snow. We can't just put it around a taxiway and close the taxiway off. We can't do that. We actually remove all the snow, take it to a snow dump area, and melt it all at a location.
[00:08:08] Amanda: Wow.
[00:08:09] Charles: That's interesting.
[00:08:12] Amanda: How far in advance, once there starts to be rumblings of a storm coming, how closely are you following that? Because a week ahead, anything can happen. Two days out, I'm pretty sure things are going to happen. What's that process like for both of you guys?
[00:08:29] Doug: I know at DCA we coordinate with ops, the maintenance, and ops groups together. We have a national weather service that we sit on. Actually, we have them every morning at 8:30. During an event, as it's coming up closer and closer, we'll have them in there every morning, trying to get the latest weather update. Even with that, I look at every weather channel, every weather app, every weather thing that's going to come through to just try to see what's going to predict to happen. It's hard.
Sometimes you get what you're supposed to, and you don't. I think coordination, coordinating with ops, coordinating with the tower, coordinating with airlines is a big help. IADs like us, if you don't have that, you're not going to have a good snow removal. You need that coordination between all groups. Yes, we listen to National Weather Service, our operators, operations, and FAA tower.
[00:09:23] Jonathan: As we like to say, so the weather service, you try and poke them for any sort of accumulation amount outside of 72 hours, they'll let you know that they can't really-- they forecast amounts inside 72 hours. We always put a grain of salt on top of [laughter] anyone that throws out a number before 72 hours. Even in that earlier horizon, weather service has a lot of great products we'll lean in on. It looks through the lens of a risk-based scenario where they'll look at something coming together even five, seven days out, and say what's the likely impact versus the likelihood of it actually coming together.
They look at impact times likelihood and come up like a risk matrix, which lets us begin even thinking in the five to seven days out, okay, what's the likelihood of something comes together and start our advanced planning, and then we can adjust accordingly. Usually when we get to 24 hours out, we're making decisions about calling in contractors. When we need to have folks on for a lot of our land-side areas and start giving heads up to our team members, "Hey, you can expect to be recalled by this time, final decision this time," and then it continues down from that point.
[00:10:36] Amanda: How many people are on the snow team for Dulles?
[00:10:40] Jonathan: We have a lot of contractor support as well. When we wrap it all up together, when we go into what we call a full recall. A full recall in our snow and ice control plan is defined as typically a one to three-inch storm. Once you start getting above one inch and definitely towards three, and any event that's rolling more than about 12 hours, we have to start rotating people on and off. When you get into a full recall scenario, that's north of 400 to 500 people at Dulles that we're recalling and bringing on to duty.
[00:11:12] Amanda: Wow.
[00:11:12] Jonathan: It's a lot of work. [laughter]
[00:11:15] Doug: Yes.
[00:11:14] Amanda: How many is it for DCA?
[00:11:17] Doug: 166.
[00:11:18] Amanda: Okay. Wow.
[00:11:20] Doug: Pretty much the same scenario. We'll look at time frames of when they're doing it because our maintenance group is part of the local union, so some of it's in the union contract. They're rotating six on six off, so duration of that storm predicts of how long we're going to be here and how many people we need. Typically, like you were saying, anything over four inches, it's a full recall.
[00:11:42] Amanda: How does MWA treat the snow staff?
[00:11:46] Doug: Very well. I know here at DCA we cater for them. We feed them. They're six on, six off, so they work six hours, and then they go rest for six hours.
[00:11:54] Amanda: They rest here on [unintelligible 00:11:55]?
[00:11:55] Doug: Yes. They rest here. They all have beds and bunks and different places that they sleep at. We have bathrooms, showers, so kitchens. They can cook something, cook their own meal, do whatever they have to do. They're treated very well, as long as it's not a storm that's going to last three or four days. Everybody gets on everybody's nerves after that.
[00:12:15] Amanda: Sure.
[00:12:16] Jonathan: After the first 24 hours, people start to get a little more edgy. No, MWA takes really good care of when we talk about our snow fighters. Sometimes you talk to your peers across industry, and there's not quite that same level of care. We have a pretty clear work on, off. It's not everybody's on, and you work until the event's gone. Without rest, that can happen when you're in a smaller operation, but we take pretty good care between rest periods and feeding folks and making sure they're bunked up well.
A lot of our folks, you joked our folks in the maintenance team, they'll be like, "What's that thing you're working snow for this year?" "It's my new truck. It's that roof I want," or whatever else. There's a financial benefit there, too, and awareness that the company takes care of you. It's hard work, a lot of work, and it's intense when it's on, but there's reward there, too.
[00:13:08] Amanda: It's important work.
[00:13:09] Jonathan: It's important work.
[00:13:09] Doug: I think a lot of them have pride in it. They know that they open the airport.
[00:13:13] Amanda: Yes, they keep it open.
[00:13:14] Doug: Yes. It's a lot of pride for the guys to be able to do that. They're good. We get good crews.
[00:13:20] Amanda: That's awesome.
[00:13:21] Charles: The Blizzard.
[00:13:23] Doug: Snowmageddon.
[00:13:24] Charles: Yes. How did you guys deal with that?
[00:13:28] Doug: Snowmageddon for DCA was very-- back in them days, when Snowmageddon was here, we didn't have six on and six off. We had a volunteer system, so you volunteered to work snow. We would do 16-hour days.
[00:13:43] Charles: Wow.
[00:13:44] Amanda: Wow.
[00:13:44] Doug: You got out there until the airfield was open, until the runway was open, and going back and slept for four or five hours, came back out and did some more work. That was one reason why we switched to a six-on, six-off, just because of the fatigue. Everybody was down. That was a lot of snow. We had a mountain. I don't know if-- we have pictures of it, and I can send you the pictures. We had a mountain of snow from hangar four to hangar seven on the airfield-
[00:14:13] Charles: Wow.
[00:14:14] Doug: -that you could see street side.
[00:14:15] Amanda: Oh. [laughter]
[00:14:16] Doug: It took a long time for it to melt, and that's to melt it with melters, because we got to haul everything. We can't just let it sit there.
[00:14:25] Charles: Where do you guys haul it to?
[00:14:27] Doug: Right there in front of the hangars on the airfield side, and we have a north dump area, just at the edge of 33--
[00:14:34] Charles: You take it there and melt it there?
[00:14:35] Doug: Yes.
[00:14:35] Charles: Okay. I thought it was all set over there.
[00:14:36] Amanda: How do you melt it?
[00:14:37] Doug: We got big snow melters you bring out there, and they take loaders and drop the snow in the melters, and it melts it to liquid.
[00:14:44] Amanda: Is it just like a heated truck?
[00:14:46] Doug: Yes. It's got a boiler in it.
[00:14:48] Amanda: Oh, interesting.
[00:14:48] Doug: Yes. Sure does. We got three of them.
[00:14:51] Amanda: Cool. Are there any at Dulles?
[00:14:53] Jonathan: Yes, we do. As Doug alluded to, it's a very different operation in the sense of space. DCA is super constrained for space. To put it this way, we have a lot of space at Dulles, which means you got a lot more snow to clear. Historically, we've had a lot of places to stash snow. We haven't been as busy the last few years as Dulles has come roaring back. We're having to switch some of those paradigms because we're beyond where we can stash and make a mountain of snow and block an aircraft parking hard stand for a few months to let it melt off.
We're getting more into the mechanical melting business ourselves as well with new concourse project and places where we used to just pile snow and let it melt until the spring. We're having to get into the mechanical melting business. Still, we can generally haul snow faster than we can melt it. Melting is time-consuming, it's energy-consuming, it's expensive. We are continuing to develop places where we can dump. If we have a lower fall rate or it's not a really deep storm, we can often haul it still faster than we can melt it.
We do have four melters at Dulles. We have a lot of concrete to clear. The CD or Charlie Delta Taxi Lanes as we like to call them, it's the big open concrete apron if you've ever looked at the big wide space between the AB concourse and United CD concourse. That is 50 acres of concrete. That's just a small portion of the airfield. When you clear 50 acres of concrete, it doesn't matter if it's only a half-inch deep. That is an enormous mountain when you're done.
Someone added it up one time and said in the number of lane miles at Dulles to clear, it is equivalent to driving a single lane or clearing a single lane of traffic all the way to Breckenridge, Colorado for one pass on the airfield.
[00:16:46] Amanda: Wow.
[00:16:46] Charles: Wow.
[00:16:46] Jonathan: A lot of concrete to clear. When we approach that, we can't do everything. We prioritize certain surfaces over other surfaces. Some is melted, some is hauled, and some is stashed and left until the storm finishes and we can kind of catch up.
[00:17:07] Amanda: You guys are also treating the runways, right? There's a team that clears it, and then behind them, follow up, are the people who treat it.
[00:17:16] Jonathan: Yes. Absolutely.
[00:17:17] Amanda: The snow treating?
[00:17:19] Jonathan: The chemical treatment is a key part of snow fighting, especially in our region where we're within just a few points of the freezing point very often in most storms. FAA regulation prohibits any corrosive salts inside the airfield perimeter fence. Airports have to use hybrid salts that are non-corrosive, things like sodium acetate or potassium acetate, or sodium formate. Non-corrosive salts, those are very expensive. Bulk rock salt is dirt cheap compared to non-corrosive salts. It's very expensive, but it is also a key part of staying ahead of the storm.
For us, that looks like we'll go out in advance of a storm and pre-treat the whole airfield. That could look as much as 20,000, 30,000 gallons of potassium acetate, and you're pre-treating the airfield because that buys you time. Sodium acetate, anti-icer, basically it lowers the freezing point of water. Water that would normally freeze at 32 degrees is now freezing much lower than that, so it buys you time. Sometimes that means everything that falls on the surface is going to melt on contact.
Even though it might be accumulating snow on the roads, outside, that the airport, you can keep the airfield with those more expensive non-corrosive chemicals where it's melted. When we pre-treat, we let that, it helps buy us time on the front end of the storm. Sooner or later, your storm typically will overwhelm that chemical and dilute it, and then we begin application as we are clearing.
What that looks like for us is snow team rolls onto the runway, it's clearing the snow, and immediately behind them are our spray trucks. As fast as we get that surface clear, we're dropping chemical on it, and that buys us, instead of a heavy fall rate, instead of having to clear that runway in 30 minutes, maybe it's another 60 minutes until we have to come back. It allows us to get more, because what we're clearing has a longer hold over time.
[00:19:25] Amanda: Fascinating.
[00:19:27] Charles: All right, great. We like to ask all our guests the same final question, and very simple, where are you guys flying to next?
[00:19:34] Doug: Where am I flying to next?
[00:19:35] Charles: Yes.
[00:19:36] Doug: I'm going to fly across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge when I get back. [laughter] That's where I fly to. I don't do much flying.
[00:19:43] Amanda: Okay.
[00:19:43] Charles: All right:
[00:19:45] Jonathan: The next place I'll be flying to is Manchester, England. My family does some ministry work there with friends we have through our church out there. I like to go to Manchester once a year and touch base with friends over there, and enjoy that city.
[00:20:01] Amanda: I do have one other very important question. Are these snow trucks named, and if not, can we name them?
[00:20:11] Doug: Ours are not named. Some people that drive them name them, ours are not named. Yes, I don't see a problem with having a name for a certain truck. We got de-icers, brooms, blowers-
[00:20:29] Amanda: There's lot that need names?
[00:20:30] Doug: -fly plows-- yes, there's 36 different pieces of equipment on our airfield, and I know IADs probably got double that.
[00:20:38] Jonathan: Yes. I suspect there's probably a variety of names somewhat derogatory for older pieces. [laughter] I believe there may be one or two where someone has stenciled a name on over the years in memory of somebody, but nothing too official.
[00:20:53] Amanda: Okay. Well, maybe we'll change that this year with some naming opportunities on social media.
[00:20:57] Jonathan: There you go. Advertising opportunity.
[00:21:00] Doug: Absolutely. That'd be cool.
[00:21:00] Amanda: There you go. Well, thank you both so much for being here. This was super educational and interesting. Thank you for all your work during the snow season.
[00:21:08] Doug: Thank you. Thank you for recognizing us.
[00:21:11] Charles: Thank you.
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That was a great conversation.
[00:21:16] Amanda: It was so interesting.
[00:21:18] Charles: Yes. What was your favorite part?
[00:21:20] Amanda: What was my favorite part? My favorite part was when we talked about naming the snow plows.
[00:21:28] Charles: What would you name them?
[00:21:29] Amanda: I don't know. I think we would have to open it up for input, right?
[00:21:35] Charles: Yes, it would be interesting to see what the public had to say.
[00:21:38] Amanda: [laughter] I think that we would get some very interesting ideas for sure.
[00:21:41] Charles: Yes, yes. Again, we appreciate all the work that they do. I know as an employee and as a passenger, I'm sure most folks really appreciate what they do.
[00:21:55] Amanda: What was your favorite part?
[00:21:57] Charles: Let's see. I would say the snow melter. I didn't know there was such a thing as a snow melter. I just thought they cleared the runway, and I never asked a question, where did the snow go?
[00:22:06] Amanda: Where does it go?
[00:22:07] Charles: Yes, yes.
[00:22:08] Amanda: Yes. No. You know what else I really enjoyed? I had no idea that they called themselves snow fighters.
[00:22:14] Charles: Yes. That's a cool name.
[00:22:16] Amanda: I love it. It makes so much sense. That's my favorite fun fact. Well, if you are interested in asking us any questions or learning more, you can find us at info@capitalrunway.com.
[00:22:31] Charles: If you have any suggestions on future podcast conversations, please let us know.
[00:22:35] Amanda: Yes. We would love to hear from you. Well, that's a wrap.
[00:22:39] Charles: Yes. On to the next one.
[00:22:48] [END OF AUDIO]