I went back and looked at this again, Donnie. The pavement is rated at D66, and given the 737 has dual-wheel landing gear, that sets a limit of 66,000 pounds (by comparison, the Seatac ratings are way up in the D200 to D250 range. A fully loaded 737 can weight up to around 150,000 for the more recent models.

So you are right, a 737 cannot operate from Fairchild, but not due to runway length but due to the rated weight limits of the asphalt pavement and its underlayment.

That is a big deal to fix. I would surmise it would require tearing up the whole runway, redoing the base and repaving it with concrete. Don't know the price, but it would be stratospheric. That new runway at Seatac, which was supposed to cost $217 million is going to wind up closer to one billion dollars!!!  A new runway at Fairchild would be cheaper as it wouldn't be quite as long as Seatac or as heavily built, but even fifty or a hundred million dollars is kind of out of the budget, to put it mildly.

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