BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport is spending the rest of the summer on one commercial runway. On July 22 it closed Runway 10-28, its longest at 10,500 feet, for a full rebuild that runs through October 8.
What’s in the job
A joint venture of Allan Myers and P. Flanigan & Sons is milling and repaving the entire strip and swapping its lighting for modern LED runway fixtures. The Maryland Aviation Administration is covering the $83.8 million tab with a mix of FAA Airport Infrastructure Grant money and the state Transportation Trust Fund. The Maryland Board of Public Works signed off in March.
The case for one long closure
Airfield pavement fails in ways that get expensive fast, from foreign-object damage to unplanned closures that scramble an airline’s day. Doing the whole rebuild in a single continuous shutdown, instead of chasing it across overnight windows for years, compresses both the disruption and usually the cost. The tradeoff is months of single-runway operations at a busy hub, a bet that a short, sharp closure beats a slow one. It fits a national pattern: airport construction is having a record year, and BWI is far from the only field pouring fresh concrete. Track the work on Exchange’s BWI runway listing.