Airplanes take off and land on runways. Big passenger planes need long runways that are up to 4 or 5 km in length . They may look like ordinary paved roads, but are made of a special material so that they won't crack when heavy planes land. Snow ploughs and machines that spread salt keep them snow- and ice-free in winter. Green, red and white lights mark runways so that pilots can see them at night and when visibility is bad. 

Airplanes use taxiways to move to the main runway or to hangars . Small trucks bring big planes out of the parking zone. 



Runway at Ardabil Airport in northwestern Iran
Image: Shahram Sharifi (GFDL 1.2 or GFDL 1.2),
via Wikimedia Commons


Gibraltar Airport's runway crossed by a road between Gibraltar and Spain
Image: Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0,
via Wikimedia Commons



Words

  • crack = break apart
  • hangar = very large building in which airplanes are kept and repaired
  • length = how long something is
  • mark = show the position of something
  • ordinary = normal, nothing special
  • paved = a surface covered with hard material
  • taxiway = small road that an airplane moves on to get to the runway
  • visibility = how much or how far you can see, especially in bad weather
  • snow plough = a metal shield that you put in front of a truck or lorry to move snow away
  • spread = here: throw out