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.
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Typically airports will try to have aircraft take off into the wind, so if the direction of wind shifts the airport can switch up the direction aircraft take off and land.
Aircraft need to move a certain speed through the air in order to take off so if they move into the wind they are getting a boost, while if they take off with the wind at their back they need to accelerate even more. Similarly if aircraft are landing with the wind at their back they will need to contact the ground moving faster than if they were flying into the wind.
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