This weekend they showed a Champ car race from the Cleveland airport. It looked like it was using significant portions of some very large runways. Plus grandstands, light towers, etc.
How does this work, since isn’t this normally a pretty busy airport? They can’t shut it down during the race, can they?
Well, they can’t really have planes taking off and landing during the race, can they?
This site gives some information on how the circuit is constructed (scroll down to the bottom). Basically, they do all the construction they can without interfering with the airport operations in the weeks leading up to the race. Then, on the Thursday before the race weekend, the airport shuts down and the rest of the track is constructed. After the race (used to be on Sunday afternoon, now Saturday night), they tear everything down and the airport resumes operation within a few hours. The race has been held annually for over twenty years, so they have the logistics pretty well in hand.
I’ve never been to Cleveland, but I believe there is another major airport in the area. They probably have extra flights that weekend, but I’m sure it creates hassles for a lot of travelers.
Airports do not and in most cases cannot use all the runways at the same time. Most major airports have runways placed at different angles to one another so that the active runway doesn’t have a severe crosswind. The Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix is an exception in that all the runways are parallel and run east-west.
I apologize for the hijack, but why is this? Is there no crosswind (or danger of) in Phoenix?
Indeed. “The Cleveland airport”, the one you’ll end up at if your ticket says CLE, is Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The one that races, air shows, etc., are held at is Burke Lakefront Airport, which is just general aviation and charters. So there aren’t any commercial flights which need to be rescheduled or rerouted anyway.
Thanks. That makes sense that they do actually close it if it’s not the major Cleveland airport.
Can’t speak for Phoenix, but LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) has the same setup, with all four runways parallel to each other. And that’s because the prevailing wind is always from the ocean, or – during a “Santa Ana” condition – from the desert, in the opposite direction. There’s never any north-south crosswinds for it to be a problem.
Plus, LAX – like Sky Harbor – is located in a heavily built-up area, so there’s no room to expand anyway. That could play a major factor right there.
Well, that explains that. I always figured all places had some kind of cross wind. I need to get out more.
Instead of expanding, could they somehow realign the runways? (That is, build new ones that traverse old ones, don’t use the old ones, and so forth.)
Skyharbor also has another distinction. The airspace around a big airport is typically laid out as a series of concentric circles around a center point, the various circles requiring varying degress of air traffic supervision (the closer you are to the airport, the more restrictions because of more traffic). Skyharbor’s airspace, however, is rectangular, not circular.
It’s not a matter of crosswinds but of it’s location between two very tall ridges of rock which the locals describe as “hills” and flatlanders such as myself describe as “mountains”. So no, they can’t realign the runways.
Well, those rock ridges would explain the lack of crosswinds…
In the '50s, the Half Moon Bay (California) Airport would have drag races.
This was also the airport that San Francisco International would divert to, in those days, when thoroughly fogged in.
AFAIK, the two events never happened at the same time.