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
It has to do with the direction of the wind.
As a pilot, you want to want to take off and land with a “headwind”, that is, the wind in your face rather than at your back. This forces more air across the wings and control surfaces of the plane, giving it more lift, which means they don’t need as much actual speed to take off and land.
For this reason, most airports will have at least one runway that runs roughly north-south, and at least one that runs roughly east-west. That way, no matter what direction the wind is blowing, there’s a runway that runs in roughly the right direction to give pilots a headwind.
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