The March 28, 2025, magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck central Myanmar did more than level buildings and bridges. It took pieces out of the country’s air transport backbone: air traffic control infrastructure collapsed at Nay Pyi Taw, radar and comms were damaged, and runways and terminals around Mandalay and other regional airports suffered varying degrees of damage. That sequence forced immediate closures and ranked aviation recovery as both a safety imperative and a logistics bottleneck for lifesaving relief.

From an operator’s point of view there are three separate threads to the cost question: the short repairs that get aircraft moving again, the intermediate repairs that return pavement to certified strength and friction, and the seismic retrofits or full reconstructions that make a runway, tower, or nav aid resilient to the next major temblor. Each carries different price drivers and operational impacts. I will walk through them with practical numbers and where those numbers come from.

What we know on the ground

  • Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw were among the worst-hit aviation sites. The Nay Pyi Taw control tower collapsed and there were reports of damaged radio and radar equipment that made operations unsafe until repairs and temporary measures were in place. Mandalay reported runway and terminal damage but was able to restore limited rescue operations within days and return to commercial international operations later in April 2025 after staged repairs.
  • The economic scale of the disaster is large. The World Bank estimated direct physical damages from the March earthquake at roughly US$11 billion, a useful macro anchor when you consider the share that transport and airports represent in a national rebuild.

What “retrofit” and “repair” mean in practice

  • Emergency patching and localized slab repair: restore a runway strip so light and rescue flights can operate. Typically short duration, limited scope, but requires heavy plant, materials, and survey to ensure no hidden subgrade failure. These actions are what allowed some rescue flights to resume within days.
  • Structural pavement repairs or overlays: mill and overlay, remove and replace failed slabs, or full-depth patching to meet pavement classification number (PCN) limits for commercial jets. These works take weeks to months, require runway closures or phased night works, and are priced according to depth of works and soil remediation required. The National Academies literature on pavement treatments shows unit costs for many rehabilitation methods and is a good technical baseline for treatment-level pricing.
  • Seismic retrofit and full rebuild: rebuild apron and runway substructure to modern seismic and drainage standards, replace lighting, fibrous shoulders, arrestor systems and provide engineered taxiway geometry. For control towers and base buildings the choice is often rebuild rather than retrofit because modern seismic codes make retrofit expensive relative to replacement. U.S. tower projects show the scale: modern tower projects and seismic responses can run in the tens to low hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars depending on scope.

Putting numbers to a single major runway: a worked example for Mandalay Assumptions and why they matter

  • Public notices and airport advisories list Mandalay’s runway length at about 14,000 feet (4,267 m). I use that length as the baseline. Width for major international runways typically falls between 45 m and 60 m; I show both to give a realistic range for area. The airport authority and ministry statements reported runway restoration and staged reopening; they did not publish a detailed unit-cost schedule.
  • Runway surface area (rough): 4,267 m x 45 m = ~192,000 m2. At 60 m width the area is ~256,000 m2. These areas drive material and plant requirements for overlays, milling, and full-depth reconstruction.

Cost bands and what they mean (country-appropriate context)

  • Emergency patching and limited slab replacement to restore operations: for a runway this size you are often dealing with multi-million-dollar bills but on the low tens of millions scale. This is what gets rescue flights and humanitarian corridors open quickly. The Myanmar ministry reported emergency repairs and the phased reopening of runways for rescue flights within days, consistent with this band.
  • Pavement rehabilitation (mill and overlay or partial full-depth replacement across significant portions): depending on local material availability, plant mobilization and the depth of works, regional airport projects and development-bank funded runway works in Asia have historically ranged from tens of millions to around US$100–$200 million for high-capacity international runways when factoring taxiways, lighting and drainage upgrades as well. ADB and similar regional projects provide multiple examples in which runway upgrade components sit in that tens-to-low-hundreds of millions bracket. Use those benchmarks when sizing Myanmar needs.
  • Full reconstruction plus seismic hardening, control tower replacement, radars and resilient comms: expect the bill to rise into the hundreds of millions for a single major international airport if you include a new tower, hardened electrical systems, replacement of precision approach lighting and certified instrument landing systems, plus extensive subgrade remediation. The SFO tower and integrated projects illustrate how an ATC tower replacement or equivalent program can itself be tens of millions to more than US$100 million.

Conservative worked ranges for Mandalay-type airport (rounded)

  • Immediate emergency repairs to restore limited operations: US$3 million to US$20 million, depending on materials and access for heavy plant. This covers slab patches, localized overlays, temporary lighting and survey work.
  • Full pavement rehabilitation of runway and primary taxiways (mill/overlay, local full-depth repairs, drainage fixes, friction reprofiling): US$30 million to US$150 million. The lower end assumes good local materials, short mobilization and limited subgrade damage. The higher end assumes full-depth replacements on large areas, imported materials and longer closures. Benchmarks come from regional airport upgrade projects and pavement rehabilitation unit costs used in practice.
  • Deep seismic hardening plus new tower, radar and nav-aids, electrical resilience, and apron reconstruction: US$80 million to US$300 million. A modern tower program alone can be a material fraction of that number in higher-income settings; proportionate costs in Myanmar will vary but the SFO and other international examples demonstrate the order of magnitude.

What a national aviation retrofit program might look like If you multiply airport-level needs across the cluster of affected airports and add air navigation systems, aerodrome ground lighting, emergency rescue and firefighting infrastructure, and training for resumed operations, you move from hundreds of millions into the low billions. That aligns with the World Bank’s macro estimate that direct damages were roughly US$11 billion. A focused aviation program across the worst-affected airports and national CNS infrastructure could therefore reasonably ask for a dedicated funding envelope on the order of US$300 million to US$1.5 billion, depending on the ambition of seismic hardening measures, procurement of foreign equipment and the involvement of development finance partners. The wide range reflects real-world uncertainty: access, security, sanctions or procurement constraints, and the need for imported specialist kit all matter.

Operational realities pilots and operators need to accept now

  • Expect phased reopenings and operational restrictions for months. Even if a runway surface is patched, supporting systems—lighting, ground navigational aids, and ATC staffing in a safe tower—may lag. Don’t assume a returned “open” status equals unrestricted ops for heavy jets. Field notices and NOTAMs will reflect weight limits, time-of-day restrictions and special inspections.
  • Temporary procedures increase crew workload. Lower visibility, degraded radar coverage and ad hoc ATC setups demand higher pilot vigilance and more conservative dispatch decisions. Airlines should budget for payload restrictions, alternate fuel planning and additional maintenance inspections of aircraft gear when operations resume from recently repaired surfaces.

Funding and pace: the bottlenecks Money alone is necessary but not sufficient. Contractors, qualified pavement labs, cranes and material supplies are all scarce when a nation has many simultaneous infrastructure failures. Experience from regional development bank-funded projects shows that runway and system upgrades are feasible in the $50–$200 million range per major airport but only with clear procurement frameworks and staged works to preserve operational windows. Donors and aviation authorities should prioritize: 1) getting a safe operational runway and emergency services back first, 2) completing pavement rehabilitation and drainage next, and 3) investing in seismic-hardening and ATC replacements as a third but funded phase.

Bottom line for safety managers and operators

  • For a single major airport such as Mandalay, expect a practical funding need ranging from tens of millions for basic repairs to low hundreds of millions for full rehabilitation plus seismic-hardening and equipment replacement. For a coordinated national aviation recovery the envelope plausibly scales into the lower billions, especially when you include resilient comms, radar and tower programs. Those estimates match the practical scale implied by the World Bank’s national damage numbers and by prior airport projects in the region. Plan for multi-year programs, staged operations, and explicit contingency funds for material import, specialist labor and unexpected subgrade remediation.

If you want I can:

  • run a site-by-site focused cost matrix for the principal affected airports using conservative unit-costs and local runway dimensions, or
  • draft a one-page procurement-first-priority checklist for an aviation recovery plan that field operations, an airline ops control center, or an airport manager can use to sequence repairs and keep flights safe while work continues.