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.?
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Runways are numbered off of compass headings – round to the nearest 10th degree and drop a zero and there’s your runway number. That way, when you’re working with someone whose primary navigation tools includes a compass, they can quickly ascertain whether they’re pointed at the correct runway.
Left and Right only comes into play when there are a pair of runways in a parallel configuration, at which point you really need to know whether you’re expected to be on the left runway or the right runway.
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