I see lots of videos where planes (so their pilots..) struggle while they are landing because of air conditions. so if windy air is problem for plane, why we didn’t built airports to no-wind areas at the first place?
In: Earth Science
Where is it no wind? Extreme crosswind tend to occur in storm and then there is wind everywhere you could build a airport.
An airport need to be on a large flat area where you do not have stuff like mountain or tall buildings after the end of the runway so you can climb and land. That is not exactly location with little wind.
Airport also need to be relative close to cities. There is in general not a lot of places to put them because the round around them will be quite noisy.
Wind is not a problem for airplanes in general. If you start into the wind you need to move at a lower ground speed before you get airborne. If you land in the same direction the landing distance is shorter.
If you look at a aircraft carrier they need to go at high speed into the wind so the aircraft can take off with full fuel and weapon load.
Wind is a problem if it to high and at an angle to the runway. So a way to solve the wind problem is multiple runways and the one you use is where the wind is close to parallel to it.
If you look back in time aipote was often circular grass areas so you aloway could land into the wind.
When you moved to runways with hard surfaces it was not uncommon to build [runways in a triangular configuration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Stansted_Mountfitchet#/media/File:RAF_Stansted_Mountfitchet_-_9_Jan_1947_Airphoto.jpg) on RAF Stansted Mountfitchet that was a bomber base build in WWII.
Another option is r two runways that cross in the middle. When you get to post WWII with heavier jet aircraft the can handle crosswind quite well and often a single runway is enough.
So the runways now might [look like this](https://goo.gl/maps/LN4YSbakdvLqomQu6) on London Stansted Airport. It is the same airport as the one with the triangular runways in the other images. You can still see the old triangle runways, one is mostly removed but you see the outline in the grass.
In a airport you see landing with extreme sidewind the limitation tend to be that there is not a lot of flat land where you can build runways in other direction.
For most airport there is relative few times there is so much sidwind so you can land. So it is not economically to build another runway. So you cancel flight or divert them to other airport if the runway cant be used
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