I have always wondered how pilots flying a plane are able to fine the runway of their destination.
I know that most pilots have navigational systems which direct them generally to the right destination. But once they arrive in the city of choice how do they locate the proper runway in which to land?
Airport runways are actually quite easy to see when you’re up in the air. You also have big numbers on the end of the runways which determine which runway to use, depending on the direction of the wind which you can also see by the windsock. You want to land into the wind to shorten landing distance. You also take off into the wind for shorter distances as well. Anyway, if it is a controlled airport, i.e., one with a control tower, the controller will tell you which runway number to use. The numbers on the end of the runway line up with your magnetic compass. The numbers are shortened to the first two. Runway 13 is a magnetic heading of 130, and obviously on the opposite end a 310 heading will be shortened to 31.
There are so many other GPS devices and moving maps available to the pilot now that it makes it damn near impossible to miss the airport, barring any malfunction of the instrument.
I fly VFR, and if you purchase a local aeronautical map for about $8.00 bucks, you’ll see the location of various airports and their location with this map as well. These maps show many other visual markers on the ground too, like roads, railroad tracks, towers, lakes, rivers, cities, etc. Other annual publications get published that list every airport in the US as well, and gives their coordinates, and location.
Well if all else fails fly IFR (I Follow Roads)
Coming into Burbank Airport and want to land on the East/West runway? Fly with Sherman Way just off your left wing.
Want to land at Van Nuys Airport? Fly North on the 405 until directed to turn left which will be at about Deveonshire. Take another left just before Balboa. The runway will be dead ahead.
A buddy of mine used to fly regularly from LA to Northern California. He used to refer to Highway 99 as the concrete Omni.
As has been said, airports are big and very visible from the air.
It depends on the airport and the weather.
If the weather is good and it is a small airport, the pilot generally will just line up with the runway and land visually.
At larger and busier airports, air traffic controllers will usually guide the aircraft to a point close to the airport where the pilot can take over, either visually or with his or her instruments. This is called radar vector.
There are procedures at most airports to help aircraft find the airport with their own navigational instruments when the weather is bad. These are called instrument approach procedures. There are many different types, using many different kinds of equipment. Traditionally, these are different types of radio beacons that can help an aircraft locate itself. More recently, GPS is also in common use. Some procedures are not very accurate, and can only point the aircraft to the general vicinity of the runway. Some are extremely accurate, however. For example, an ILS is accurate to within a few feet close to the runway. An aircraft with a qualified crew and equipment flying an ILS CAT 3 approach can land with almost no visibility at all.
At night there are rotating beacons that can be seen from a great distance. Civilian beacons are green and white (180º apart), and rotate at about 30 rpm. (Military beacons have a double-white as well as a green.)
I don’t think you pointed out that ILS stands for “Instrument Landing System”. Indeed, it can guide pilots to the exact location of the runway with limited, or even zero, visibility.
Here are a couple of example approach procedures for the Maui Kahului Airport (PDF links):
It’s mostly been covered, but I’ll add a bit about traffic patterns.
It’s pretty easy to identify the runway you want, but it takes a bit more thought when there are crossing runways, and if you need to make a non-standard pattern entry.
Most of the time you want to fly parallel to the runway in the opposite direction of the intended landing. This is called the downwind leg, and it’s usually flown so that you make a left turn toward the runway. Easy enough.
But sometimes you need to enter the pattern at a different point. Controllers at towered airports may ask you to fly at a right angle to the runway, then turn in (entering on a the base leg). To complicate matters, they may require right-hand traffic instead of the usual left. And if there are crossing runways, it takes some good situational awareness to sort out how to enter and fly the pattern.
As an instructor, I see a lot of new pilots (and sometimes experienced ones) get confused in this situation. If you’re keeping your head in the game it’s not that difficult, but it can take a few moments to think it through.
How does one follow roads from their instrument panel?
Just a bit of pilot humor. IFR is Instrument Flight Rules. Certain conditions (mostly low visibility; i.e. clouds) trigger those rules; you have to be trained and tested to fly in those conditions, have certain equipment on the plane, and have certain contacts with air traffic control for the area you’re in.
Visual Flight Rules are less strict. If you can see the ground, certain landmarks are easy to follow. Depending on where you are, you can use lakes, coastlines, railroad tracks, whatever. Something like an interstate highway stands out like a sore thumb, and might lead to the very city you’re flying to. So IFR becomes I Follow Roads.
Pilots are a million laughs, eh?
Flying over land in visual meteorological conditions, pilots can navigate to their destination without any navigation instruments other than a watch and a compass or a gyroscopic heading indicator, by reference to features on the ground and a chart. Of course lots of VFR pilots use GPS now for convenience, but relying on GPS is a really bad habit.
Once you have spotted the airport (or field) at which you are going to land, figuring out the correct runway is usually no problem at all. At a controlled airport you will be told which runway to land on, you will have familiarised yourself with the airport layout, and the runways are identified by big numbers visible from the air.
At an uncontrolled airport with several runways, it’s a bit trickier because you have to decide for yourself which runway to land on, usually based on wind direction (land into wind). But there is no guarantee the other traffic will be using the same runway (for example if there are two intersecting runways that are close in direction), so it’s important to talk to the other pilots and be aware of what everyone else is doing.
Cessna Three-seven-kilo, cleared to land runway 6. Beechcraft Eight-Five-Three, cleared to land runway two-four.
Tower, Three-Seven-Kilo. You just cleared ME to land on runway SIX! :eek:
Y’all be careful now, y’heah?
– or –
If you read me, rock the tower!
(I have better ones, but these are more of the quality of the ‘I Follow Roads’ joke.)
Well… on a day with a brisk breeze the weather pretty much dictates which runway to use at a multi-runway non-tower airport (of course, idiots landing downwind are always a possibility you have to watch for). It’s the calm days when really any runway could be used that I find most, um, “exciting”.
This needs to be explained to non-pilots. Runway 6 and runway 24 are the same runway but represent the approach from opposite directions. The runway number represents the magenetic heading minus the first digit so runway 6 is magnetic heading 060 and runway 24 is heading 240. This can be a little confusing with runway 2 because the opposite is runway 20. It’s not unknown for pilots to land in the wrong direction.
As natural magnetic variations change over time then runways will be renumbered. This happened a couple of years ago at an airport near me and it caught me off guard.
To answer the ops question, it use to be harder to pick out the correct runway in minimum visibility. Particularly if there were 2 runways that were close to each other in direction (say 21 and 23). If you were flying in 3 miles of visibility and facing the sun it could be quite difficult picking out a runway. With a GPS you can extend out an approach and literally fly it all the way down. This is helpful if you’re trying to find a grass strip that is surrounded by matching ground cover. You just create a way point that is 1 mile behind the end of the runway and fly it down until the runway becomes obvious.
Yeah, see, I would have thought the reference to the instrument panel would have made it clear that I’m aware what IFR and VFR are.
I don’t get the “humor,” though, since anyone following roads is necessarily flying VFR, IFR by definition is the panel and ATC. (Hence, Instrument Flight Rules, am I right?)
Then again pilots seem to think they are in a class of citizenry all their own, so far be it for me to begin questioning their “humor.”
It gets a little harder when you are trying to find a dirt strip in the middle of square mile upon square mile of wheat. But my dad used to do it perfectly. Never looked at a map, barely glanced at the compass. But he could pilot that old Stinson from SoCal to the middle of Kansas and hit the farm without circling a bit.
So what class of citizenry would that be exactly?
Pilots are just plane people with a special air about them.
How do you know if there’s a pilot at your party? He’ll tell you.
Magnetic? Are you sure? It was my impression that the earth’s magnetic field changes over time, and that new magnetic declination maps had to be issued from time to time to compensate for these changes. Do they repaint the runway numbers when this happens?