September 23, 201312 yr Hello, Guys! Please see in given picture. Where Aircraft will fly as compared to Wind direction?
September 23, 201312 yr Leaving aside the fact that your constellation 12L - 08R is impossible (It has to be either 12L - 30R or 08R - 26L due to the fact that the heading difference between the two ends of a RWY has to be 180 degrees): I think numbers 1 and 2 are obvious - aircraft will usually use the runway that is headed at the direction where the wind is coming from (unless wind speed is below 5 kts, in that case the choice is probably mostly influenced by noise abatement) to help the aricraft take off at lower speeds due to the relative air-flow. In case 5 your RWY 08R (or 08L or C for that matter) would be favored, as it has at least one component of the wind direction vector antiparallel to the runway; for the same reason you would use 12L/C/R in the last case. In cases 3 and 4, it would mainly depend on 1) the wind speed and 2) the environment of the airport: If the wind speed is too high the runway has to be closed, as it would be dangerous to take off and land in heavy crosswinds, especially if gusting. One would in this case prefer the runway that allows arrivals over sparsly populated areas (e.g. large agricultural areas) and departures over more densely populated areas (villages, towns), as departing aircraft can do turns for noise abatement much easier than arriving aircraft can. Especially in cases 3 and 4, but also in cases 5 and 6 other runways would be favored where available, because they would fit wind direction better. In the simulator, it will depend on which runway is defined as the "primary" one - that one will be the active RWY if the wind direction is exactly perpendicular to the RWY heading. If there is even 1 degree difference, the sim will use the one that has the lower difference between RWY heading and wind direction. Florian
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