Every time I’ve been to an airport and looked out the window, I see numbers and letters on the runways/taxiways. How are these numbers determined?
In: 1
They have numbers from 1 to 36. Those numbers represent how many tens of degrees the runway is from magnetic north.
This means that a runway in one direction is that number +/-18 in the other direction. runways 3 and 21 are the same runway in different directions for example.
Parallel runways obviously are the same number of degrees from magnetic north and thus get the same number. A letter is added to differentiate parallel runways. **R**ight, **L**eft and **C**enter. Right and left as seen from a plane going down that runway. 27R is the same physical runways as 9L.
One funny aspect of this is that since the magnetic north pole isn’t fixed some runways at higher latitudes occasionally need to be renumbered without actually physically moving.
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