Dear friends and followers, welcome back to my channel. Today's question is a topic which we need to cover before
we get started with the ILS explanation videos - what is the meaning behind the numbers and the letters on the runway?
Make sure to watch this video until the end 'cause this is a very important topic. So let's get started!
I'm sure many of you have seen my approach and landing videos here on YouTube and you might have wondered
what is that number and the letter you see on the runway just prior touchdown? So let's first talk about the number.
Okay we're going to have to cover some basic navigation first.
As we look at our Planet Earth we have the geometric north and south pole in each hemisphere
marking the top and the bottom of the planet, but there is no instrument besides GPS which could guide us
towards these poles. But the planet has its own magnetic field surrounding the Earth,
creating the magnetic north and south pole which are slightly off from the geometric poles.
Now, you've all seen a compass and you know that the needle
always points towards magnetic north. Now, let's look at this runway here. You can see the numbers 08.
Now let's imagine you could draw a line all the way from the magnetic north pole down until it crosses the runway centerline.
You would see that the two lines create an opening angle of 80 degrees,
meaning the runway centerline is 80 degrees relative to the magnetic north pole.
So why are there only the numbers 0 and 8 on the runway? Like did they run out of paint or what?
No, there are two reasons for that.
Now let's say the magnetic heading of the runway would be zero eight four then it would be rounded off to the nearest
tenth so in our case zero eight zero
Leaving out the last zero you have runway zero eight
But if you would name the runway zero eight Zero
could lead to
misinterpretation as given headings are spelled the same way like fly heading one two zero for example
Now as you sit in your plane on the runway, in this example runway zero five in Madera
You know that your plane nose is pointing zero five zero degrees so heading north east and your plane's
tail is pointing plus
180 degrees into the opposite direction so the reciprocal runway should be
yes Runway two three
Ok, let's fly into Naples, Italy. As you can see on the approach chart the final runway course of magnetic heading reads
two three six so that would mean that if you would round off to the nearest tenth that will give us
runway two four. Okay another example
Here we have magnetic heading of three three one
So that would give us round it off with the heading of three three zero or
runway three three and by the way
don't ever say runway thirty-three the numbers are always spelt separately. Okay
one more approach. Let's fly into Frankfurt, Germany. Now the final runway course is two four eight so that would give us
runway two five but now you see this letter L. So what Is that good for. Now as
Frankfurt has three parallel runways each one of them has an identifier letter
So in this video, we are approaching runway two five left so the L
is for left, the middle
one has a C for runway two five center and the third as an R for runway two five right
So as you come into approach the ATC controller will say Speedbird one two five heavy turn left heading two one zero
to intercept the ILS approach runway
two five left or any other runway so that you know which runway to fly to
Same with the tower controller. Here you can hear the LAX tower controller giving a landing clearance to a Fedex
triple 7 and he clearly states which runway he is cleared to land on - Fedex thirty-seven forty-five heavy wind
two six zero at five, runway two five left, cleared to land
Cleared to land two five left, thirty-seven forty-five. Now as
we are in Los Angeles, LAX has four parallel runways so how do you identify
four runways? As you can see in this chart here all four runways have the same magnetic
inbound course of two five one which would mean runway two five. But
LAX had to name the two northern runways two for left and right
despite the magnetic runway heading and the southern runways two five left and right to reduce the risk of
misinterpretation during radio communication
Obviously the same with the reciprocal runways zero six left and right and zero seven left and right
What about magnetic variation? Now over the course of time the magnetic poles slowly drift
meaning as the magnetic pole moves, it also
changes the magnetic heading of the runway. Now the changes are only minor but if you look at this old chart from
2009 showing runway zero five and two three at London Stansted and you look at today's approach
chart you can see that Stansted had to change all the runway markings, taxi signs, charts etc
so that the newer runway zero four and two two as you can see in this video. I would say bad luck for London Stansted
So that was it for today. I hope you enjoyed the short video about the runway numbers and letters and make sure to fly-by
my Instagram account, the link is in the description below and hit the subscribe button so you
won't miss out future technical videos. All the best see you next Thursday. Your Captain Joe