I live near Harry Reid Airport (FKA McCarren airport) in Las Vegas, directly west of the airport. My apartment faces west. The vast majority of the time, I can look out my window or walk my dog and see planes lined up to come in for a landing (sometimes 7 or more at once!) and watch them fly eastward overhead on their descent. But sometimes, every now and then, the planes go the opposite direction and I see them going WEST and gaining altitude (so clearly they have taken off). WHY do they seemingly randomly switch the runway direction? Weather and wind does not seem to play any factor as I’ve tried to pay attention to if I only see them going the other way when it’s cloudy or windy and no… It truly seems random. Why do they do this? It baffles me.
In: 49
Weather and wind are the largest factors. Here’s the aviation weather for KLAS: https://aviationweather.gov/metar/data?ids=klas&format=decoded&hours=0&taf=off&layout=on Flightaware, flightradar24, or any of the traffic tracking websites/apps can show you the flow. LiveATC publishes audio feeds of the radio frequencies, but it takes some studying to learn to make sense of the calls. Tower might announce the winds direction and speed with the takeoff and landing clearances because it’s so important for flying the plane.
Here’s CGP Grey on runway numbers. He touches on the wind rose https://youtu.be/qD6bPNZRRbQ and generally taking off into the wind.
If there are thunderstorms on one side of the airport, they might allow a tailwind in order to take off away from it.
The 180 isn’t that big of a deal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airfield_traffic_pattern still applies.
The FAA makes the pilot training handbooks available as free PDFs: https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/aviation the Pilot’s Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge and the Airplane Flying Handbook are the two main books for the basics.
Latest Answers