My apologies for my excessive expertise in airport matters.
There are a lot of airports, around the globe -- and I'm talking airline-served airports that can handle Boeing's "big iron" -- that do not have a taxiway parallel to the runway. You've got that same set-up at
POP, as well as at Samana and La Romana; and you'll find similar airports throughout the Caribbean. The reason is simple -- a runway sturdy enough and long enough for a 500,000-lb airliner like an Airbus A330 is expensive to build, and adding a parallel taxiway nearly doubles the expense. It does, however, limit the number of flights the airport can handle; while your Airbus is back-taxing to the runway end, turning around, running up and taking off, the runway is closed to any other action.
For an airport like
STI or
POP, that doesn't have a lot of flights, this makes economic good sense; but it limits the operating capacity of the airport to something less than 10 operations (arrival or departure) per hour. It wouldn't work for airports as busy as Santo Domingo or Punta Cana. And as for hub airports, like Charlotte, NC or Miami, FL -- fuhgettaboutit!!! An awful lot of their concrete is devoted to places where cab-ranks of airliners can sit and wait for their turn to take off.
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