How does one figure out the active runway of an airport which has several runways such as 25R,and 25L or big airports like JFK and ORD in the preflight? Right now I down load real WX and load it, then scroll over to my destnation airport and view the wind direction their and try to guess which runway to use. My only problem is I always guess wrong I go for RWY 25R program the FMC and when I get close to the airport and make my calls for landing their using 25L or someother RWY and now I have to pause and reprogram the FMC for the different RWY or I just say the Hell with it and land no Far's to worry about here. There has to be something I'm missing here is there a way to listen to ATIS at the dest.airport prior to take off that would sure help any simple ideas for a simple question? :-hmmm

If you are using the default FS2002 ATC, then they will always use the longest runway. In your example, 25L must be longer than 25R. R-

Choose "Go To Airport" from the World menu and then choose your destination airport and "Active Runway" for the runway. FS will put you on the active runway for the wind conditions you have chosen. Then you will know which runway you will be using for landing.

Several ways to find out which way the wind is blowing. 1. Dial in the ATIS (automatic terminal information system) freq which you can find by clicking on the runways (map view) of your destination 2. Cycle through the information display (shift/z) at the top of the screen. It will give you the winds aloft which for the most part tend to give you trends of it's direction on the ground.Just as in the real world, plan ahead and expect the un-expected.Terry