JEP FI-3B Homework: Runway length with displaced thresholds

First let me say that I'm surprised to find that I've been spelling threshold incorrectly my whole life! I swear it used to have three 'h's in it!

At PVG we were looking at the airport diagram to make sure it was suitable for taking off. Given that 388 needs only 850' to take off and the favored runway was shown as 3524' long by 70' wide, this would be fine. But the runway had squiggles at both ends, indicated displaced runway thresholds. Such thresholds are pointers for where landings should begin and do not affect the takeoff starting position.

Obviously, however, the usable runway length is different for takeoffs and landings on a runway with a displaced threshold. My question was what the 3524 meant: Physical pavement length? Usable landing length? My gut said physical length, and Chuck's answer was "homework."

The answer is that it is the physical length.

I flipped through the majority of the AIM after failing to come up with any terms that were in the index that seemed reasonable to discover whether runway length is the pavement length or the usable length or what. I did find a "terminal procedures publication" at AOPA that describes the symbology used on airport diagrams. It specifically says "Runway length depicted is the physical length of the runway (end-to-end, including displaced thresholds, if any) but excluding areas designated as stopways. Where a displaced threshold is shown and/or part of the runway is otherwise not available for landing, an annotation is added to indicate the landing length of the runway; e.g., RWY 13 ldg 5000'." (Side note: This AOPA linked doc is also page K1 in the 03Aug2006 Southeast Volume 2 issue of the US Terminal Procedures, the legend for the airport diagram, which seems like it must be in ALL of those booklets, which makes me think it's a trustworthy source!)

The PVG diagram, with displaced thresholds on both ends, is labeled as 3524x70. The notes for the runways give the displacement distances (510' for 2, 440' for 20), but do not include any "landing length" annotations, as far as I can tell. So it seems to me that the pavement is 3524' and a pilot landing on 2 would need to make a mental note that the usable landing length is really 3014. They do give specific approach ratios for the thresholds. This is based on airport information from AirNav.com, and agrees with the AOPA kneeboard diagram.

Chuck notes that there are many sources for airport diagrams and that the official terminal procedures publication comes from NACO. In fact, I looked at a few diagrams for PVG and one didn't use the squiggle to mark the displaced thresholds, and I wouldn't have noticed that if i wasn't looking for it.