June 6, 20232 yr 17 hours ago, Bob Scott said: Well KLAX actually has two pairs of parallel runways, so four runways in simultaneous operation, compared to KSFO's two pairs of crossed runways, which keeps things down to two operating at once. Can't speak specifically to the hows/whys of traffic SOPs at KSFO. I'd imagine wake turbulence separation requirements still make simultaneous arrival/departure ops on both runways more efficient in terms of throughput. You can launch a departure as soon as landing traffic clears the runway, where you have to wait 2-4 minutes between large/heavy/super acft departures. If you can interlace the arrivals and departures on a runway, you can realistically move an acft every minute, versus one every 2-4 minutes for departure or arrival-only ops when you have to observe 2-4 minutes departure separation and 4-8 mile arrival separation. I was a controller at KLAX Tower (and other locations) in another lifetime. Most of what you state is accurate as it relates to LAX vs. SFO and runway configs. The SFO design is not as efficient as LAX as crossing runways add to complexity and often require additional arrival spacing (28L/R) to avoid excessive departure delay (1L/R). Back in the day at LAX, we used all four runways (24L/R, 25L/R) for arrivals and departures, employing Visual Approaches (except for foreign carriers as an unwritten procedure) as much as possible. Today, they operate far more conservatively using the outboards (25L / 24R) for arrivals and inboards ( 25R / 24L) for departures. SFO is often plagued by morning fog and ceilings prohibiting liberal use of visuals, thereby, causing delay and Traffic Management Initiatives (TMI).
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