Convenience or safety, construction at airports normally leads to a backup of flights, but everyone would prefer repairs over plane crashes.

Construction at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport(MSP) began on Monday, April 14 and has shut down a runway facing NW and SE. This runway, 30L, is the busiest runway at MSP and with it shut down, more planes have been redirected to the runway facing the highland bridge. This construction comes as normal necessary maintenance of tearing up and repaving the runway, does not cause many delays and only sends more planes over the Highland Bridge and SPA.

Junior James Welsh, an aviation fanatic, follows flight plans of most planes using a software called Flight Radar 24, a website that shows every flight’s details from the make and model of the plane to its destination. With one of the four runways closed, there has been a larger concentration of planes on the runway going over the Highland Bridge and SPA, as that runway has the most similar path to 30L.

Welsh’s family represents the perfect split of people who enjoy the construction and those who dislike it. The majority of his family shares the same opinion as other people who live in the neighborhood near Highland Bridge, who are not particularly happy with the increased noise. Welsh, on the other hand, was delighted as more planes became visible from his house and at baseball practice.

Ninth-grader Lucas Laguna lives around a five-minute walk from Highland Bridge and plays tennis every afternoon.

“I just noticed more planes going over, I can look up in the sky and see a bunch of contrails, there’s just more,” Laguna said.
The planes don’t distract from his playing at all: “It’s always just in the back of your head,” he said.

The first part of the construction is set to be completed on May 23, 2025 and the second part will begin on Aug. 18, according to Simple Flying. After the first period of construction, routes and flights will return to normal until Aug 18, 2025. However, construction will begin again on safety improvements and other airfield projects.