All the time when watching airliner radio chatter vids and stuff like that, I see runways being referred to by names like 9-left or 27-right, what gives? Is there a specific reason a runway might be called that despite the airport not having nearly that many runways? Wouldn’t it just be simpler to have runway 1, runway 2, etc.?
In: Other
Runways are named for their compass bearing. So Runway 2-5 is the one at compass bearing 250 (or actually 241-250 because they round up and then drop the last zero.) so when a pilot is told “you’re coming in on runway 3-2” they know roughly where the plane should be.
If there are two runways in parallel on the same bearing, one is designated Left, and the other Right.
It’s better than just naming them 1,2 etc because it’s actually meaningful.
Latest Answers