Egyptian Armed Forces
The Egyptian Armed Forces are the state military organisation responsible for the defense of Egypt. They consist of the Egyptian Army, Egyptian Navy, Egyptian Air Force and Egyptian Air Defense Command. In addition, Egypt maintains 397,000 paramilitary troops; the Central Security Forces comes under the control of the Ministry of Interior. The Border Guard Forces falls under the control of the Ministry of Defense; the modern Egyptian armed forces have been involved in numerous crises and wars since independence, from the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Egyptian Revolution of 1952, Suez Crisis, North Yemen Civil War, Six-Day War, Nigerian Civil War, War of Attrition, Yom Kippur War, Egyptian bread riots, 1986 Egyptian conscripts riot, Libyan–Egyptian War, Gulf War, War on Terror, Egyptian Crisis, Second Libyan Civil War, War on ISIL and the Sinai insurgency. The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, the senior uniformed officer, is Colonel General. Mohamed Zaki, the Chief of Staff is Lieutenant General.
Mohammed Farid Hegazy. The Armed Forces' inventory includes equipment from different countries around the world. Equipment from the Soviet Union is being progressively replaced by more modern U. S. French, British equipment, a significant portion of, built under license in Egypt, such as the M1 Abrams tank. Egypt is a participant in NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue forum. Egypt is one of the few countries in the Middle East, the only Arab state, with a reconnaissance satellite and has launched another one EgyptSat 1 in 2007; the Armed Forces enjoy considerable independence within the Egyptian state. They are influential in business, engaging in road and housing construction, consumer goods, resort management, vast tracts of real estate. Much military information is not made publicly available, including budget information, the names of the general officers and the military’s size. According to journalist Joshua Hammer, "as much as 40% of the Egyptian economy" is controlled by the Egyptian armed forces, other authoritative works such as Springborg reinforce this trend.
Senior members of the military can convene for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, so during the course of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, when Mubarak resigned and transferred power to this body on February 11, 2011. In the early 1950s, politics rather than military competence was the main criterion for promotion; the Egyptian commander, Field Marshal Abdel Hakim Amer, was a purely political appointee who owed his position to his close friendship with Nasser. He would prove himself grossly incompetent as a general during the Suez Crisis. Rigid lines between officers and men in the Egyptian Army led to a mutual "mistrust and contempt" between officers and the men who served under them. Tsouras writes that the Israelis "seized and held the..initiative throughout the campaign and destroyed the Egyptian defenses." In a few instances, such as at the Mitla Pass and Abu Aghelia, Egyptian defenses were well-organised and stubbornly held, but this did not make enough difference overall. Nasser ordered a retreat from the Sinai which allowed the Israelis to wreak havoc and drive on the Canal.
S. pressure had forced an end to the fighting. Before the June 1967 War, the army divided its personnel into four regional commands; the remainder of Egypt's territory, over 75%, was the sole responsibility of the Frontier Corps. In May 1967, Nasser closed the Straits of Tiran to passage of Israeli ships. Israel considered the closure of the straits deadly serious, prepared their armed forces to attack. On June 3, three battalions of Egyptian commandos were flown to Amman to take part in operations from Jordan, but U. S. historian Trevor N. Dupuy, writing in 1978, argues from King Hussein of Jordan's memoirs that Nasser did not intend to start an immediate war, but instead was happy with his rhetorical and political accomplishments of the past weeks. Israel felt they needed to take action; the Egyptian army now comprised two armoured and five infantry divisions, all deployed in the Sinai. In the weeks before Six-Day War began, Egypt made several significant changes to its military organisation. Field Marshal Amer created a new command interposed between the general staff and the Eastern Military District commander, Lieutenant General Salah ad-Din Muhsin.
This new Sinai Front Command was placed under General Abdel Mohsin Murtagi, who had returned from Yemen in May 1967. Six of the seven divisions in the Sinai had their chiefs of staff replaced. What fragmentary information is available suggests to authors such as Pollack that Amer was trying to improve the competence of the force, replacing political appointees with veterans of the Yemen war. After the war began on 5 June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt, destroyed its air force on the ground, occupied the Sinai Peninsula; the forward deployed. Field Marshal Amer, overwhelmed by events, ignoring previous plans, ordered a retreat by the Egyptian Army to the Suez Canal; this developed into a rout as the Israelis harried the retreating troops from the ground and from the air. Scholars such as Kenneth Pollack, deAtkine, Robert Springborg have identified a number of reasons why Arab armies performed so poorly against Israel from 1948 to 1991 and afterwards. In battle against Israel from 1948–91, junior officers demonstrated an unwillingness to manoeuvre, ‘innovate, take initiative, or act independently’.
Ground forces uni
Nicosia
Nicosia is the largest city and seat of government of the island of Cyprus. It is located on the banks of the River Pedieos. Nicosia is the southeasternmost of all EU member states' capitals, it has been continuously inhabited for over 4,500 years and has been the capital of Cyprus since the 10th century. The Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities of Nicosia segregated into the south and north of the city in early 1964, following the fighting of the Cyprus crisis of 1963–64 that broke out in the city; this separation became a militarized border between the Republic of Cyprus and Northern Cyprus after Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in 1974, occupying the north of the island, including northern Nicosia. Today North Nicosia is the capital of Northern Cyprus, a state recognized only by Turkey, considered to be occupied Cypriot territory by the international community. Apart from its legislative and administrative functions, Nicosia has established itself as the island's financial capital and its main international business centre.
In 2018, Nicosia was the 32nd richest city in the world in relative purchasing power. The earliest mention of Nicosia is in the clay prism of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon in 672 BC; this is a mention to the city-state of Ledra located on the site of Nicosia, the city is named "Lidir". The name Ledra and variations remained in use as late as 392 AD, when it was used in writing by Saint Jerome. However, that text refers the city as "Leucotheon", early Christian sources of this period are the first to use similar variations of the name Lefkosia; the origin of the name "Lefkosia" is considered by scholars to be a "toponymic puzzle". The name is recorded in the majority of Byzantine sources as "Leukousia", it is accepted in literature that the name "most probably" derives from the Greek phrase "leuke ousia". Nicosia has been in continuous habitation since the beginning of the Bronze Age 2500 years BC, when the first inhabitants settled in the fertile plain of Mesaoria. Nicosia became a city-state known as Ledra or Ledrae, one of the twelve kingdoms of ancient Cyprus built by Achaeans after the end of the Trojan War.
Remains of old Ledra today can be found in the Ayia Paraskevi hill in the south east of the city. Only one king of Ledra is known: Onasagoras; the kingdom of Ledra was destroyed early. Under Assyrian rule of Cyprus, Onasagoras was recorded as paying tribute to Esarhaddon of Assyria in 672 BC. By 330 BC, Ledra was recorded to be a small unimportant town, it is thought that the settlement was economically and politically dependent on the nearby town of Chytri. The main activity of the town inhabitants was farming. During this era, Ledra did not have the huge growth that the other Cypriot coastal towns had, based on trade. In Byzantine times, the town was referred to as Λευκωσία or as Καλληνίκησις. In the 4th century AD, the town became the seat of bishopric, with bishop Saint Tryphillius, a student of Saint Spyridon. Archaeological evidence indicates that the town regained much of its earlier significance in the early Christian period, the presence of two or three basilicas with opus sectile decorations, along with marbles decorated with high relief indicate the presence of a prosperous and sophisticated Christian society.
After the destruction of Salamis, the existing capital of Cyprus, by Arab raids in 647, along with extensive damage to other coastal settlements, the economy of the island became much more inward-looking and inland towns gained relative significance. Nicosia benefited from this and functioned as an outlet of the agricultural products from its hinterland, the Mesaoria plain, it further was at an advantageous position due to its ample water supply. As such, the town developed enough for the Byzantine Empire to choose Nicosia as the capital of the island around 965, when Cyprus rejoined the Byzantine Empire; the Byzantines moved the island's administration seat to Nicosia for security reasons as coastal towns were suffering from raids. From that point on it has remained as the capital of Cyprus. Nicosia was the seat of the Byzantine governor of Cyprus. Testimony as late as 1211 indicates that Nicosia was not a walled city at that point and thus that the Byzantines did not build a city wall, thinking that the city's inland location would be sufficient for defense purposes.
The Byzantines did, build a weak fort within the city. The economy under Byzantine rule consisted of the trading of agricultural goods, but the town produced luxury items and metalware due to the presence of the imperial administration. On his way to the Holy Land during the Third Crusade in 1187, Richard I of England's fleet was plagued by storms, he himself stopped first at Crete and at Rhodes. Three ships continued on, one of, carrying Joan of England, Queen of Sicily and Berengaria of Navarre, Richard's bride-to-be. Two of the ships were wrecked off Cyprus, but the ship bearing Joan and Berengaria made it safely to Limassol. Joan refused to come ashore, fearing she would be captured and held hostage by Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus, who hated all Franks, her ship sat at anchor for a full week before Richard arrived on 8 May. Outraged at the treatment of his sister and his future bride, Richard invaded. Richard laid siege to Nicosia met and defeated Isaac Komnenos at Tremetousia and became ruler of the island, but sold it to the Knights Templar.
The Fr
British Midland International
British Midland Airways Limited was an airline with its head office in Donington Hall in Castle Donington, close to East Midlands Airport, in the United Kingdom. The airline flew to destinations in Europe, the Middle East, North America and Central Asia from its operational base at London Heathrow Airport, where at its peak it held about 13% of all takeoff and landing slots and operated over 2,000 flights a week. Bmi was a member of Star Alliance from 1 July 2000 until 20 April 2012.bmi was acquired from Lufthansa by International Airlines Group on 20 April 2012, was integrated into British Airways by 27 October 2012. Bmi's subsidiaries bmibaby and bmi Regional were purchased, although IAG did not wish to retain either. Bmi Regional was sold to Sector Aviation Holdings in May 2012 and operated first under the “bmi Regional” and "flybmi" brand until it went into administration on 16 February 2019, whereas bmibaby was closed down in September 2012. British Midland Airways Limited held a Civil Aviation Authority Type A Operating Licence, permitting it to carry passengers and mail on aircraft with 20 or more seats.
The airline dates back to 1938, when Captain Roy Harben established Air Schools Limited as a school for training pilots of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. Captain Harben had been approached by the Derby Corporation to run a new aerodrome under construction near Burnaston, planned to become an airport. Sir Kingsley Wood, the Secretary of State for Air opened the aerodrome as Derby Municipal Airport on 17 June 1939. Military flying training continued at the airport throughout the war. Air Schools Limited formed a parent company, Derby Aviation Limited, in 1946, Harben died the following year of a heart attack, his wife remained the controlling shareholder of the business and asked E. W. Phillips, involved in running the flying school with Captain Harben, to become the new managing director; the new parent company incorporated Wolverhampton Aviation, based at Pendeford, which offered ad hoc charter and freight flights with de Havilland Dragon Rapides, as well as aircraft maintenance and brokerage.
In 1953, Derby Aviation ceased flying training, following the award of a licence to operate scheduled flights from Burnaston and Wolverhampton to Jersey. Flights in each direction were required to land at Elmdon Airport in Birmingham to allow passengers to clear customs; the first flight was made on 18 July 1953. The following year, Wolverhampton Aviation was merged into Derby Aviation, and, in 1955, the company purchased its first Douglas DC-3, a converted former military transport. International services to Ostend commenced in 1956, flights carrying holidaymakers from the UK to mainland Europe began as well; the company was contracted by Rolls-Royce to transport aero engines to customers all over the world. In 1959, Derby Aviation formed Derby Airways as its airline business and introduced a new livery incorporating the new airline's name. Domestic scheduled flights within the United Kingdom began the same year. On 1 October 1964, after buying the Manchester Airport-based scheduled and charter airline Mercury Airlines, the company changed its name to British Midland Airways and moved operations from Burnaston to the opened East Midlands Airport.
The corporate colours of blue and white were adopted at that time, along with the first turboprop aircraft, a Handley Page Dart Herald. Minster Assets, a London-based investment and banking group, acquired the airline in 1968, in 1969 promoted former Mercury ground handling manager Michael Bishop to become the company's general manager. From this point, Bishop drove the company forward, with domestic and European expansion continuing apace; as a first step, in November 1969, BMA took over Autair's Heathrow–Teesside route, which marked the airline's Heathrow debut. In 1970, BMA entered the jet age with the introduction of three new BAC One-Eleven 500s, followed by an ex-Pan Am Boeing 707–321 in 1971; the former had been intended to be used on European inclusive tour charters while the latter was to be used on transatlantic "affinity group" charters. In 1970, BMA became the first British airline independent from government-owned corporations to employ UK-based, non-White cabin crew. Following his appointment as managing director in 1972, Bishop withdrew the One-Elevens from service, two of which were swapped for three Handley Page Dart Heralds while the third was subsequently leased to Court Line.
As the early-model, high-time second-hand 707s commanded a low resale value, the airline decided to keep these aircraft and lease them out to other airlines on a wet lease basis, beginning in November 1972 with a £3.3 million, two-year contract to operate Sudan Airways' Blue Nile service between Khartoum and London. The decision to pull out of both the IT and "affinity group" markets was taken to reverse heavy losses BMA had incurred on these charter operations due to its lack of scale and lack of vertical integration with a tour operator, which put it at a commercial disadvantage vis-à-vis the competition, as well as uneconomical charter rates as a result of overcapacity; this resulted in BMA concentrating on regional, short-haul scheduled services and ad hoc charters using turboprops such as the Herald and Viscount as these were more economical than contemporary jets on short, thin routes. The success of the airline's wet lease operation resulted in an increase in the number of Boeing 707s allocated to this activity, including the addition of several model 707-320B and -320C aircraft from 1976.
All of these were le
Airline hub
Airline hubs or hub airports are used by one or more airlines to concentrate passenger traffic and flight operations at a given airport. They serve, it is part of the hub-and-spoke system. An airline operates flights from several non-hub cities to the hub airport, passengers traveling between spoke cities need to connect through the hub; this paradigm creates economies of scale that allow an airline to serve city-pairs that could otherwise not be economically served on a non-stop basis. This system contrasts with the point-to-point model, in which there are no hubs and nonstop flights are instead offered between spoke cities. Hub airports serve origin and destination traffic. In the airline industry, a focus city is a destination from which an airline operates limited point-to-point routes. Ergo, a focus city caters to the local market rather than to connecting passengers. However, with the term's expanded usage, a focus city may function as a small-scale or total hub. Allegiant Air, JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are examples of US-based airlines that consider some of their focus cities run like a hub.
The hub-and-spoke system allows an airline to serve fewer routes, so fewer aircraft are needed. The system increases passenger loads. However, the system is costly. Additional employees and facilities are needed to cater to connecting passengers. To serve spoke cities of varying populations and demand, an airline requires several aircraft types, specific training and equipment are necessary for each type. In addition, airlines may experience capacity constraints. For the passenger, the hub-and-spoke system offers one-stop air service to a wide array of destinations. However, it requires having to make connections en route to their final destination, which increases travel time. Additionally, airlines can come to monopolise their hubs, allowing them to increase fares as passengers have no alternative. Airlines may operate banks of flights at their hubs, in which several flights arrive and depart within short periods of time; the banks may be known as "peaks" of activity at the hubs and the non-banks as "valleys".
Banking allows for short connection times for passengers. However, an airline must assemble a large number of resources to cater to the influx of flights during a bank, having several aircraft on the ground at the same time can lead to congestion and delays. In addition, banking could result in inefficient aircraft utilisation, with aircraft waiting at spoke cities for the next bank. Instead, some airlines have debanked their hubs, introducing a "rolling hub" in which flight arrivals and departures are spread throughout the day; this phenomenon is known as "depeaking". While costs may decrease, connection times are longer at a rolling hub. American Airlines was the first to depeak its hubs, trying to improve profitability following the September 11 attacks, it rebanked its hubs in 2015, feeling the gain in connecting passengers would outweigh the rise in costs. The hub-and-spoke system is used by some cargo airlines. FedEx Express established its main hub in Memphis in 1973, prior to the deregulation of the air cargo industry in the United States.
The system has created an efficient delivery system for the airline. Other airlines that use this system include UPS Airlines, TNT Airways, Cargolux and DHL Aviation, which operate their primary hubs at Louisville, Liège, Luxembourg and Leipzig respectively. Although the term focus city is used to refer to an airport from which an airline operates limited point-to-point routes, its usage has loosely expanded to refer to a small-scale hub as well. For example, JetBlue's New York–JFK focus city runs like a hub, although in reality it is still deemed as a focus city. A fortress hub exists when an airline controls a significant majority of the market at one of its hubs. Competition is difficult at fortress hubs. Examples include Delta hubs at Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis–Saint Paul. Flag carriers have enjoyed similar dominance at the main international airport of their countries and some still do. Examples include Lufthansa at Frankfurt Airport, Air Canada at Toronto Pearson Airport, Alitalia at Rome Fiumicino Airport, KLM at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Garuda Indonesia at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, British Airways at London Heathrow, Air China at Beijing Capital Airport, Iberia at Madrid-Barajas Airport and Air France at Paris Orly and Charles de Gaulle Airports.
A primary hub is the main hub for an airline. However, as an airline expands operations at its primary hub to the point that it experiences capacity limitations, it may elect to open secondary hubs. Examples of such hubs are Turkish Airlines' Istanbul–Sabiha Gökçen hub, British Airways' hub at London-Gatwick, Air India's hub at Mumbai and Lufthansa's hub at Munich. By operating multiple hubs, airlines can expand their geographic reach, they can better serve spoke–spoke markets, providing more itineraries with connections at different hubs. A given hub's capacity may become exhausted or capacity shortages may occur during peak periods of the day, at which point airlines may be compelled to shift traffic to a reliever hub. A reliever hub has the potential to serve several functions for an airline: it can bypass the congested hub, it can absorb
Libya
Libya the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa, bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, Tunisia to the northwest. The sovereign state is made of three historical regions: Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. With an area of 1.8 million square kilometres, Libya is the fourth largest country in Africa, is the 16th largest country in the world. Libya has the 10th-largest proven oil reserves of any country in the world; the largest city and capital, Tripoli, is located in western Libya and contains over one million of Libya's six million people. The second-largest city is Benghazi, located in eastern Libya. Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age; the Phoenicians established trading posts in western Libya, ancient Greek colonists established city-states in eastern Libya. Libya was variously ruled by Carthaginians, Persians and Greeks before becoming a part of the Roman Empire.
Libya was an early centre of Christianity. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area of Libya was occupied by the Vandals until the 7th century, when invasions brought Islam to the region. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire and the Knights of St John occupied Tripoli, until Ottoman rule began in 1551. Libya was involved in the Barbary Wars of the 19th centuries. Ottoman rule continued until the Italian occupation of Libya resulted in the temporary Italian Libya colony from 1911 to 1947. During the Second World War, Libya was an important area of warfare in the North African Campaign; the Italian population went into decline. Libya became independent as a kingdom in 1951. A military coup in 1969 overthrew King Idris I; the "bloodless" coup leader Muammar Gaddafi ruled the country from 1969 and the Libyan Cultural Revolution in 1973 until he was overthrown and killed in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Two authorities claimed to govern Libya: the Council of Deputies in Tobruk and the 2014 General National Congress in Tripoli, which considered itself the continuation of the General National Congress, elected in 2012.
After UN-led peace talks between the Tobruk and Tripoli governments, a unified interim UN-backed Government of National Accord was established in 2015, the GNC disbanded to support it. Parts of Libya remain outside either government's control, with various Islamist and tribal militias administering some areas; as of July 2017, talks are still ongoing between the GNA and the Tobruk-based authorities to end the strife and unify the divided establishments of the state, including the Libyan National Army and the Central Bank of Libya. Libya is a member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the OIC and OPEC; the country's official religion is Islam, with 96.6% of the Libyan population being Sunni Muslims. The Latin name Libya referred to the region west of the Nile corresponding to its central location in North Africa visited by many Mediterranean cultures which referred to its original inhabitants as the "Libúē." The name Libya was introduced in 1934 for Italian Libya, reviving the historical name for Northwest Africa, from the ancient Greek Λιβύη.
It was intended to supplant terms applied to Ottoman Tripolitania, the coastal region of what is today Libya having been ruled by the Ottoman Empire from 1551 to 1911, as the Eyalet of Tripolitania. The name "Libya" was brought back into use in 1903 by Italian geographer Federico Minutilli. Libya gained independence in 1951 as the United Libyan Kingdom, changing its name to the Kingdom of Libya in 1963. Following a coup d'état led by Muammar Gaddafi in 1969, the name of the state was changed to the Libyan Arab Republic; the official name was "Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" from 1977 to 1986, "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" from 1986 to 2011. The National Transitional Council, established in 2011, referred to the state as "Libya"; the UN formally recognized the country as "Libya" in September 2011, based on a request from the Permanent Mission of Libya citing the Libyan interim Constitutional Declaration of 3 August 2011. In November 2011, the ISO 3166-1 was altered to reflect the new country name "Libya" in English, "Libye" in French.
In December 2017 the Permanent Mission of Libya to the United Nations informed the United Nations that the country's official name was henceforth the "State of Libya". The coastal plain of Libya was inhabited by Neolithic peoples from as early as 8000 BC; the Afroasiatic ancestors of the Berber people are assumed to have spread into the area by the Late Bronze Age. The earliest known name of such a tribe was the Garamantes, based in Germa; the Phoenicians were the first to establish trading posts in Libya. By the 5th century BC, the greatest of the Phoenician colonies, had extended its hegemony across much of North Africa, where a distinctive civilization, known as Punic, came into being. In 630 BC, the ancient Greeks colonized the area around Barca in Eastern Libya and founded the city of Cyrene. Within 200 years, four more important Greek cities were established in the area that became known as
Runway
According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a natural surface. In January 1919, aviation pioneer Orville Wright underlined the need for "distinctly marked and prepared landing places, the preparing of the surface of reasonably flat ground an expensive undertaking there would be a continuous expense for the upkeep." Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, the magnetic azimuth of the runway's heading in decadegrees. This heading differs from true north by the local magnetic declination. A runway numbered 09 points east, runway 18 is south, runway 27 points west and runway 36 points to the north; when taking off from or landing on runway 09, a plane is heading around 90°. A runway can be used in both directions, is named for each direction separately: e.g. "runway 15" in one direction is "runway 33" when used in the other. The two numbers differ by 18.
For clarity in radio communications, each digit in the runway name is pronounced individually: runway one-five, runway three-three, etc.. A leading zero, for example in "runway zero-six" or "runway zero-one-left", is included for all ICAO and some U. S. military airports. However, most U. S. civil aviation airports drop the leading zero. This includes some military airfields such as Cairns Army Airfield; this American anomaly may lead to inconsistencies in conversations between American pilots and controllers in other countries. It is common in a country such as Canada for a controller to clear an incoming American aircraft to, for example, runway 04, the pilot read back the clearance as runway 4. In flight simulation programs those of American origin might apply U. S. usage to airports around the world. For example, runway 05 at Halifax will appear on the program as the single digit 5 rather than 05. If there is more than one runway pointing in the same direction, each runway is identified by appending left and right to the number to identify its position — for example, runways one-five-left, one-five-center, one-five-right.
Runway zero-three-left becomes runway two-one-right. In some countries, regulations mandate that where parallel runways are too close to each other, only one may be used at a time under certain conditions. At large airports with four or more parallel runways some runway identifiers are shifted by 1 to avoid the ambiguity that would result with more than three parallel runways. For example, in Los Angeles, this system results in runways 6L, 6R, 7L, 7R though all four runways are parallel at 69°. At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, there are five parallel runways, named 17L, 17C, 17R, 18L, 18R, all oriented at a heading of 175.4°. An airport with only three parallel runways may use different runway identifiers, such as when a third parallel runway was opened at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in 2000 to the south of existing 8R/26L — rather than confusingly becoming the "new" 8R/26L it was instead designated 7R/25L, with the former 8R/26L becoming 7L/25R and 8L/26R becoming 8/26.
Runway designations may change over time because Earth's magnetic lines drift on the surface and the magnetic direction changes. Depending on the airport location and how much drift occurs, it may be necessary to change the runway designation; as runways are designated with headings rounded to the nearest 10°, this affects some runways sooner than others. For example, if the magnetic heading of a runway is 233°, it is designated Runway 23. If the magnetic heading changes downwards by 5 degrees to 228°, the runway remains Runway 23. If on the other hand the original magnetic heading was 226°, the heading decreased by only 2 degrees to 224°, the runway becomes Runway 22; because magnetic drift itself is slow, runway designation changes are uncommon, not welcomed, as they require an accompanying change in aeronautical charts and descriptive documents. When runway designations do change at major airports, it is changed at night as taxiway signs need to be changed and the huge numbers at each end of the runway need to be repainted to the new runway designators.
In July 2009 for example, London Stansted Airport in the United Kingdom changed its runway designations from 05/23 to 04/22 during the night. For fixed-wing aircraft it is advantageous to perform takeoffs and landings into the wind to reduce takeoff or landing roll and reduce the ground speed needed to attain flying speed. Larger airports have several runways in different directions, so that one can be selected, most nearly aligned with the wind. Airports with one runway are constructed to be aligned with the prevailing wind. Compiling a wind rose is in fact one of the preliminary steps taken in constructing airport runways. Note that wind direction is given as the direction the wind is coming from: a plane taking off from runway 09 faces east, into an "east wind" blowing from 090°. Runway dimensions vary from as small as 245 m long and 8 m wide in s
Nicosia International Airport
Nicosia International Airport is a disused airport located 8.2 km west of the Cypriot capital city of Nicosia in the Lakatamia suburb. It was the main airport for the island, but commercial activity ceased following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974; the airport site is now used as the headquarters of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus. Nicosia International Airport was the principal airport for Cyprus from its initial construction in the 1930s as the Royal Air Force station RAF Nicosia until 1974. At first it acted principally as a military airport, it is still owned by the British Ministry of Defence; the landing strip was constructed in 1939 by Pierides & Michaelides Ltd.. Services were provided by Misrair with four-engined DH.86 aircraft. During the Second World War the airport's facilities and runway were extended by local contractors Stelios Joannou and George Paraskevaides. American bombers used the runway in 1943–44 when returning from the allied bombings of the Romanian Ploieşti oil fields.
After the war commercial services were reintroduced, by 1948 Misrair, BOAC, Cyprus Airways and MEA were providing regular services. The facilities provided were limited, with three Nissen huts used as a terminal building housing Customs, Civil Aviation, Signals and Operational Services. Restaurant services were provided by the NAAFI. In 1949 the first terminal building was designed and built by the Public Works Department at a cost of £50,000 and was opened in May of that year; the building was extended together with the aircraft apron in 1959. The building was vacated in 1968 with the opening of the new terminal; the Nicosia Flying Club and other flying organisations continued to use the old building. The RAF withdrew from the airfield in 1966 due to limited space brought on by vastly increasing civilian aircraft movements. On 27 March 1968 a modern new terminal, designed by the German company Dorsch und Gehrmann from Wiesbaden, built by Cybarco, was opened, at a cost of £1,100,000, of which £500,000 was contributed by Britain.
The new terminal could accommodate 800 passengers at the parking apron eleven aircraft. In June 1974 plans were in place for the terminal to be extended and the apron to be enlarged to 16 aircraft of which two places were to be for widebodied aircraft, but this was never to happen: on 15 July 1974 right wing Greek nationalists overthrew the democratically elected president of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios. Nicosia Airport was closed by the coupists used on 17 July 1974 to ferry troops from Greece to Cyprus to support the coup against Makarios. Only on the 18 July was it allowed to reopen to civilian traffic, becoming a site of chaotic scenes as holidaymakers and other foreign nationals tried to leave the island. On 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus, bombing the airport and forcing its permanent closure; the leaders of the Greek Cypriot Community and Turkish Cypriot Community discussed reopening Nicosia International Airport at the beginning of 1975. After the leader of the Greek Cypriot community, Archbishop Makarios, had rejected the Turkish Cypriot proposal to reopen the airport to international traffic under joint control, agreement to reopen it was'in principle' reached during the negotiations in Vienna from 28 April to 3 May 1975.
However, discussions by a joint committee set up for that purpose were unproductive. The last commercial airline flights out of Nicosia Airport took place in 1977 under UN Special Authorisation, when three of the remaining Cyprus Airways aircraft stranded there since the 1974 invasion were retrieved by British Airways engineers and flown to London. One of these, a Hawker Siddeley Trident 2E, is now on show at the Imperial War Museum Duxford. With the Turkish invasion the airport was the scene of some of the heaviest fighting between Cypriot and Turkish forces, which led the United Nations Security Council to declare it a United Nations Protected Area during the conflict; this required both sides to withdraw at least 500 metres from the perimeter of the airport. With the ceasefire signed on 16 August 1974 Nicosia Airport became part of the United Nations controlled Buffer Zone separating the two communities on the island, it has been inoperable as a functioning airport since. However, active United Nations helicopters are based at the site, it is the location of Blue Beret Camp, used as the headquarters for the UN peace keeping mission in Cyprus UNFICYP and it is used as one of the sites for intercommunal peace talks.
It is the home to a number of recreational facilities for UN personnel. Following the closure of Nicosia Airport, a new airport in Larnaca was opened in the Republic of Cyprus in 1975, while Northern Cyprus established Ercan International Airport and was opened in 2004, both on former RAF airfields. Paphos International Airport was opened in the Republic of Cyprus in 1983. There have been some plans for Nicosia Airport to be reopened under United Nations control as a goodwill measure, but so far neither the Greek Cypriots nor the Turkish Cypriots have pursued this option. In 2013 Michael Paraskos of the Cornaro Institute in Cyprus argued that with three other functioning airports in Cyprus the old Nicosia Airport would no longer be needed in the event of a political settlement on the island. Instead he suggested it should be turned into a tax-free industrial zone, designed to attract foreign high tech firms, employing Cypriots from both the Greek and Turkish communities on the island. On 3 March 1956 a Handley Page Hermes was destroyed on th
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