Explainer28 SEP 20265 min readDromopedia editors

Five kilometres of concrete

The longest runways were not built for airliners. They were built for thin air, for test flights, and for a spacecraft that landed without engines and could not go around.

Edwards Air Force Base, Calif, main base area
Edwards Air Force Base · Unknown author · Public domain · Commons

A runway is as long as the worst day it is planned for. The FAA's guidance to airport designers works from the airport's elevation and the mean daily maximum temperature of its hottest month, because both thin the air, and thin air gives less lift and less thrust.1 The heavier the aircraft, the longer the run to take-off speed and the longer the roll after landing.2 ICAO's yardstick for an aircraft type, the reference field length, is the take-off distance at maximum weight, at sea level, in a standard atmosphere, on a level runway.3 Everything an airport adds to that is a correction for its own altitude, heat and traffic.

For most large airports the corrections are modest. China's civil aviation authority puts a 4E hub runway at 3,000 m or more, and notes that at low altitude some 3,600 m is enough for anything.4 The runways that pass 5 km were laid for other reasons.

Thin air: Qamdo Bangda

BPXQamdo Bangda Airport CN · 4,334 M / 14,219 FT · RWY 4,500 M / 14,764 FT4,334 m above sea level. The register lists runway 14/32 at 4,500 m, opened in October 2017; the older strip beside it was about 5,500 m long.

Bangda, in eastern Tibet, sits at 4,334 m. Its original runway was extended to about 5,500 m in the 1990s, and for two decades China's aviation authority described it as the world's highest airport with the world's longest runway.4 The reason is the one in the design manuals: at that height the air is so thin that an airliner needs far more ground to reach flying speed, and far more to stop.5

The old runway wore badly. After emergency repairs in 2013, a rebuild of the flight area began in October 2015 at a cost of 849 million yuan, and a new 4,500 m runway built to class 4C standards entered service on 28 October 2017.6 What became of the 5,500 m strip is not clearly documented: one Chinese account says it is now used in shortened form, others treat it as replaced.7 The register, from OurAirports, lists only the 4,500 m runway.8 High airports are the subject of a separate piece, Thin air.

Test flying: Zhukovsky

ZIAZhukovsky International Airport RU · 115 M / 377 FT · RWY 4,600 M / 15,092 FTRunway 12/30: about 5,400 m of concrete, of which 4,600 × 70 m is the operational part used by the civil airport since 2016.

Ramenskoye, south-east of Moscow, is the airfield of the Gromov Flight Research Institute, where Soviet and Russian design bureaux tested their aircraft and where the Buran orbiter's approach and landing trials were flown. Its main runway 12/30 is 5,402 m long, the longest in Europe, and was the site of the biennial MAKS air show until 2021.9 The show has not been held since; it is now planned for 2026.10

The civil airport on the same runway, Zhukovsky International, opened on 30 May 2016 after a two-year reconstruction. The operational runway it declares is 4,600 × 70 m, and the Russian air navigation service describes that as the longest runway in Europe, able to take any aircraft without restriction.11 Both figures are right: 5,402 m is the concrete, 4,600 m is the part in use. The register carries the 4,600 m from OurAirports, and so does the AIP-derived pilot data.12

A dry lake: Edwards

EDWEdwards Air Force Base US · 2,311 FT / 704 M · RWY 15,024 FT / 4,579 MPaved runway 05R/23L: 4,579 m (15,024 ft), FAA. The longest of the seven runways marked on Rogers Dry Lake runs about 12 km.

Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert has a concrete runway of 15,024 ft, about 4.6 km, but its real asset is next to it. Rogers Dry Lake is 44 square miles of hardened clay, dead flat and bare of vegetation, with water on it only after the infrequent winter rains. Seven runways are simply painted on its surface, the longest running 7½ miles, and the concrete runway itself has a 9,000 ft lakebed overrun for aircraft in trouble.13 Guinness lists the lakebed runway, at 11.92 km, as the longest military runway in the world.14 The surface bears about 250 pounds per square inch without cracking, and the lake has been a National Historic Landmark since 1985.15

That is why the Space Shuttle came here first. Columbia ended the first orbital mission, STS-1, on lakebed runway 23 on 14 April 1981.16 Of the 59 Shuttle landings at Edwards, 23 were on the clay, the last in 1991; after that the orbiters used the concrete.17 The lakebed has its weaknesses. It is closed when wet, and while steady rain refills the aquifer beneath it and hardens the surface, a violent storm can cause parts of it to collapse.18

Landing without engines: Kennedy

KTTSSpace Florida Launch and Landing Facility US · 9 FT / 3 M · RWY 15,001 FT / 4,572 MRunway 15/33: 4,572 m (15,000 ft) of concrete with a 305 m paved overrun at each end. 78 Shuttle landings, 1984–2011.

The orbiter came back from space as a glider. It had no engines for the landing phase, so there was no missed approach and no second try.19 The runway NASA built for it at Kennedy Space Center, begun in 1974 and ready in 1976, is 15,000 ft long and 300 ft wide, with 1,000 ft paved overruns at each end and 50 ft asphalt shoulders; the concrete is 16 in thick at the centreline.20 Between 1984 and 2011 it took 78 Shuttle landings, up to eight in a year. In October 2019 the Air Force's X-37B spaceplane landed on it from orbit.21

Since June 2015 the state spaceport authority Space Florida has run the strip under a 30-year agreement with NASA. It holds an FAA launch and re-entry site operator licence, calls the place the Launch and Landing Facility, and reported more than 400 landings and departures in 2023.22 The FAA's airport record, and the register with it, use the name "Space Florida Launch and Landing Facility".8

Long is not busy

None of these is a busy airport. Bangda handled 265,000 passengers in 2022, Zhukovsky 1.5 million in 2024, and the other two carry no scheduled traffic at all. The register's Busiest collection tells the opposite story: Atlanta, with 103 million passengers in 2025, gets by with a longest runway of 3,777 m. Among major hubs the long runways belong to the hot and the high. Denver, at 5,434 ft, has one of 4,877 m (16,000 ft); Doha, at sea level but in Gulf heat, one of 4,850 m.8 Runway length is set by physics on the worst day, not by how many people pass through.

Sources

  1. FAA, Advisory Circular 150/5325-4B, Runway Length Requirements for Airport Design, 1 July 2005, §505 (airport elevation stands in for pressure altitude) and §506 (mean daily maximum temperature of the hottest month). Boeing's Airplane Characteristics for Airport Planning manuals carry the performance charts the circular refers to.

  2. FAA, Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge, chapter 11, on density altitude: high elevation, high temperature and low pressure all raise it and reduce performance.

  3. ICAO, Annex 14, Volume I — Aerodrome Design and Operations, 8th edition, 2018, chapter 1, definition of aeroplane reference field length, and §1.6.3 note 1: the reference length picks the aerodrome code number and "is not intended to influence the actual runway length provided".

  4. Civil Aviation Administration of China, "跑道要多长" (How long should a runway be), 23 September 2015 (in Chinese): 4E runways of 3,000 m or more, 3,600 m sufficient at low altitude, and Bangda at 4,334 m with a 5,500 m runway "the highest and longest in the world today". 2

  5. The same CAAC page, and the Shanghai paper The Paper, "全世界最长的民用飞行跑道，在中国的这里" (in Chinese), on why Bangda's runway is so long. Chinese Wikipedia, 昌都邦达机场, gives the original runway as 4,200 m, extended to about 5,500 m after civil opening in the 1990s.

  6. Government of the Tibet Autonomous Region, "昌都邦达机场新建跑道投入使用" (Bangda's new runway enters service), 29 October 2017 (in Chinese): 4,500 m, class 4C, 849 million yuan, new ILS and approach lighting. Qamdo municipal government, project start notice, on the groundbreaking of 18 October 2015 and the wear of the old pavement after the 2007 extension and 2013 repairs.

  7. The Paper, as above: the 5,500 m runway "现截短使用", now used in shortened form. English Wikipedia says the old runway was closed, without a citation; Simple Flying, 24 March 2025, says the new runway replaced it. No CAAC statement on its status was found.

  8. Dromopedia register: Longest runways, open airports by longest runway, from OurAirports, or the FAA for US airfields. The top of the list is therefore not the four airports here: it opens with the Gisp ice strip in Greenland at 5,300 m, then Xigaze and Ulyanovsk Vostochny at 5,000 m, Upington at 4,900 m, Denver at 4,877 m and Doha at 4,850 m. Bangda: entry data, 4,500 m and 265,440 passengers in 2022. Zhukovsky: entry data, 4,600 m and 1.49 million passengers in 2024. Edwards: entry data, 05R/23L 4,579 m; the lakebed runways are not in the FAA runway data. Kennedy: entry data, 15/33 4,572 m. Denver: entry data, 16R/34L 4,877 m, elevation 5,434 ft. Doha: entry data. Atlanta: entry data, 3,777 m, 103.1 million passengers in 2025 (BTS). 2 3

  9. Жуковский (аэропорт), Russian Wikipedia: runway 12/30 5.4 km in total, operational part 4,600 × 70 m, the airfield of the Gromov Flight Research Institute (LII) and TsAGI, MAKS held there until 2021, opening 30 May 2016. Zhukovsky International Airport, English Wikipedia, on the Buran trials, citing the Russian AIP aerodrome chart for the 4,600 m.

  10. Russian Aviation, "MAKS airshow rescheduled for 2025", 26 June 2024; Defense Mirror, "MAKS Air Show Postponed to 2026".

  11. State ATM Corporation (Russia's air navigation service), "The Zhukovsky airport is open", 2017: "the longest runway in Europe: 4600 x 70 meters, it allows to accommodate all types of aircrafts without any restrictions", supplied by the Gromov institute's airfield. Ops Group, "New Moscow Airport: Ramenskoye", 16 February 2016, gives the full 5,402 m.

  12. AIP VFR data for UUBW, aip.aero, from the Russian AIP: runway 12/30, 4,600 × 70 m, concrete, elevation 377 ft. The Russian AIP itself (caiga.ru) was not reachable when this was checked.

  13. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, fact sheet FS-2003-11-086, "The Lake Beds", 2003: Rogers Dry Lake 44 square miles, seven "drawn on" runways, the longest 7½ miles, 15,000 ft concrete runway with a 9,000 ft lakebed overrun, 345 flying days a year. FAA, airport data for EDW, effective 3 September 2026: elevation 2,311 ft, runways 05L/23R, 05R/23L and 07/25.

  14. Guinness World Records, Longest runway (military): 11.92 km, "on the west side of Rogers dry lakebed".

  15. Rogers Dry Lake, English Wikipedia, citing the National Park Service and USGS: about 250 psi bearing strength, National Historic Landmark designated 3 October 1985. National Park Service, Rogers Dry Lake.

  16. NASA, STS-1 Space Shuttle Columbia on Rogers Dry Lakebed: landing on 14 April 1981. National Park Service, as above, on lakebed runway 23.

  17. List of Space Shuttle landing sites, English Wikipedia: 59 landings at Edwards including five approach-and-landing test flights, 23 on lakebed runways, none on a lakebed after 1991; one landing at White Sands; 78 at Kennedy.

  18. Air & Space Forces Magazine, "Edwards Dodges Major Damage from Tropical Storm, But Lakebed Runways Will Be Assessed", 21 August 2023, quoting the base's runway managers.

  19. Elaine Liston and Dawn Elliot, "History of the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center", 40th Space Congress, 1 May 2003: the orbiter "lacks propulsion during the landing phase. There is no option for a missed approach to circle and try again."

  20. NASA Kennedy, Shuttle Landing Facility: 15,000 × 300 ft, 1,000 ft overruns, 16 in of concrete at the centre. NASA, press release of 22 June 2015, for the 50 ft shoulders and the 30-year agreement. Construction from 1 April 1974 and opening in 1976: Shuttle Landing Facility, English Wikipedia, citing NASA's 2007 facility page.

  21. FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, Shuttle Landing Facility History, updated 14 December 2023: 78 landings 1984–2011, up to eight in 1997, X-37B in October 2019, transfer to Space Florida in June 2015, licence LRSO 18-018.

  22. Space Florida, Launch and Landing Facility (LLF): 15,000 ft, 30-year agreement, over 400 movements in 2023. FAA, airport data for TTS, effective 3 September 2026: "Space Florida Launch and Landing Facility", elevation 8.5 ft, runway 15/33.

Codes, elevations and runway lengths in the airport cards are from the Dromopedia register, built from FAA NASR and OurAirports. Each entry’s data page names the source of every field; see also About the data.