“Obdam Airport”: refurbishment of a 27 year 3-tunnel steel PBB

Anton Air Support completed the full refurbishment of a 27 year old PBB in our home town Obdam, The Netherlands. We inspected the PBB before the dismantling and listed the materials that could be reused or must be renewed. This PBB is completely disassembled and, after sandblasting and spraying, reassembled. A lot of materials could be reused (sustainability) and other materials were completely replaced, such as cables, sensors, screen and control system.

We can also install several options, if requested by the client, like programming automatic docking, repainting the bridge in the colors requested by the client, mounting a GPU unit or a PCA unit brackets under the PBB, air conditioning in the bridge, and more. We can also monitor the maintenance status and more on a big screen in our office (See PBB Dashboard)

One of the most important parts of the PBB are the rollers on the brackets. These rollers ensure that the 3-tunnel sections, when the PPB drives to the right position for the right type of airplane, slides smoothly in and out. These movements release tremendous forces on the rollers on the bracket and on the brackets itself. As a result over many years, a lot of these the rollers and brackets (36 in total) have become completely skewed, which does not improve the safety of the bridge. During major maintenance, this problem should have been spotted (which unfortunately did not happen) and adjusted.

Anton Air Support didn’t performed the maintenance on these bridges at the airport, but after our findings we did notify the customer with the outcome.

It’s great to see an operational passenger boarding bridge here in our hometown Obdam, after an almost complete refurbishment. On the outside sides, you can clearly observe the difference compared to the non-renovated 27-year-old bridge next to the refurbed one..

Anton Air Support extended the life span of this refurbished PBB by 15 years! We invested in sustainability (by reusing materials and new durable materials) and reducing the CO2 emissions, to contribute to our CO2 footprint goals for a greener environment.

The passenger bridge is operational and the first customers have visited “Airport Obdam” for a demonstration. We will welcome many international customers for a demonstration in 2024.

“Anton Airport Obdam is open for demonstration and we are looking for a buyer”.