Timeline for Why might an airliner fly a large U-turn before landing?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Oct 15, 2017 at 17:05 | review | Low quality posts | |||
| Oct 15, 2017 at 19:11 | |||||
| S Oct 13, 2017 at 15:40 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
replace mobile wikipedia link with non-mobile link
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| Oct 13, 2017 at 15:39 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Oct 13, 2017 at 15:40 | |||||
| Oct 13, 2017 at 14:43 | comment | added | reirab | @DavidRicherby The difference he was referring to is more applicable for the case of traffic arriving from the direction where they would already be on-course to the current runway direction. At controlled fields, this traffic will often just be vectored straight onto final. At uncontrolled fields, it's more customary (at least for VFR traffic in the U.S.) to still fly past the airport and enter the pattern 45 degrees to the downwind (opposite direction of runway traffic) and then turn base to final (which is the "U-turn" that the OP asked about.) | |
| Oct 13, 2017 at 14:28 | comment | added | David Richerby | You describe everybody landing in the same direction as completely standard in GA. However, you begin the sentence with "but", which suggests that this situation is different the previous thing were talking about (large airports). It's not different at all. Indeed, at large commercial airports, it is more important for everybody to land in the same direction, because it's the only way you can possibly get the throughput. At an airport with only a few plane movements an hour, it wouldn't affect throughput at all. | |
| Oct 13, 2017 at 14:09 | comment | added | Martin Argerami | Precisely. In order to have everyone land in the same direction, a pattern is established. | |
| Oct 13, 2017 at 10:14 | comment | added | David Richerby | Do you perhaps have this backwards? The asker was on a commercial flight to a large airport. At large airports, it's much more efficient for everybody to land (and take off) in the same direction since you can pack vehicles moving in the same direction much more tightly than vehicles moving in opposite directions. | |
| Oct 13, 2017 at 9:13 | history | answered | Martin Argerami | CC BY-SA 3.0 |