Work starts on renovation of runway lighting at Tempere-Pirkkala Airport

Finavia will carry out the €1.1 million renovation of the approach lighting system at Tampere-Pirkkala Airport this summer.

The work is a continuation of Finavia’s investments and lifecycle management, which has been carried out systematically despite the challenging economic situation that began in 2020.

The maintenance of the airport’s critical infrastructure is ongoing and the costs are high due to the nature of the operating environment, EU regulations and legal requirements.

”The renovation of the approach lighting system is an important part of the development and maintenance of the airport’s critical infrastructure. With good project planning, we can carry out the work so that air traffic to Tampere-Pirkkala Airport is not interrupted,” says Mari Nurminen, manager of Tampere-Pirkkala Airport.

Tampere-Pirkkala Airport is one of Finavia’s four so-called shared airports, which serve both military and civil aviation at the same time.

In 2025, around 140,000 passengers travelled via Tampere-Pirkkala Airport on a total of 19,355 flights. In addition to commercial scheduled and chartered traffic, military aviation, cargo flights and flight training operate at the airport.

RENOVATION PHASES

The renovation project will be carried out in three phases with a planned completion date of August 2026.

During the project, the approach lighting system at the eastern end of the runway, which indicates the location of the runway to the landing aircraft, will be replaced as part of the lifecycle management and maintenance of the critical infrastructure.

The overall length of the approach lighting system is 900 metres. The line consists of nearly 50 light masts, which are 0.3–13.6 metres high due to the differences in terrain height. The lights installed at the end of the new masts are LED technology, which will save almost 80 per cent more energy than the old lights.

Finavia notes that the project’s impacts on the environment and people have been taken into account in the planning of the project.

The old lights and cables will be recycled, and some of the masts can be reused in Finavia’s other sites for a new purpose. Finavia’s experts have led the project’s planning phase, and during the construction site phase, Finavia’s personnel will participate in shortening the runway.

Due to the airport’s large scale, projects carried out at airports often require external service providers, and Finavia also employs external companies and their employees for this project. The project is estimated to employ approximately twenty people from local companies.