!This section contains difficult information. It may be too difficult to understand for smaller kids. Please, go through it by yourself first and check which information is most useful for you - or most interesting for your child.
You may know by now that the runways have numbers on them and even if there is one or two runways at one airports, they will not be names Runway 01 and Runway 02. That is because those numbers mean something!
But before we get there, you should remember one super important thing: the most important rule in aviation? Safety first.
It is safest to take-off and land into the wind. Landing is super easy to understand: the pilot can use the wind's force to help him slow down faster. Take-off is a little trickier, but the thing is that with the wind blowing "in the face of an aircraft" the plane can reach the speed needed for take-off sooner - as what matters here is the speed the air moves over the wings.
If the wind blew from behind, the velocity of the plane would need to be higher to take-off and the runway - longer. Also for landing, as the wind would not help the plane to stop.
Finally, if the wind blew from side, the impact on the plane would be uneven - and that would make it more difficult for the pilot to make those maneuvers safely.
Ok, so now you know the runway should face the wind - so the direction of the runway will follow the most common wind conditions in the given location. If it is necessary, there will be more than one runway and they will cross - to avoid the crosswind landings and take-offs if possible, when wind is common from different directions. But it is also possible, that there will be 2 or 3 parallel runways - to allow for more planes to land and take-off with shorter time in between.
Back to the numbers
They come from the compass bearings - and they are universal for airports all over the globe, so the pilots don't have to wonder what to expect on a given airport - even if they land there for the first time.
So a full circle has 360 degrees. The 360 depicts North, 180 - South, 90 - East and 270 - West. For simpler codes, the bearings are rounded off to the nearest tenth: so 270 turns into 27, and the 90 - into 9 [but we use double digits, so it will be 09]. A southeast facing runway will have a number 14 (the middle between 180 - South and 90 - East is 135, rounded off to the nearest tenth that is 140).
If there are two or three parallel runways, they get the 3rd symbol - a letter R (Right), L (Left) and C (Center). Like in JFK airport in New York: there are two runways heading southwest coded 22L and 22R and two southeast with 13L and 13R codes.
When there are more runways heading in the same direction, some of them will have the number shifted by 10 degrees to allow for the one digit difference. Like in Paris CDG, with four parallel runways: two of them got the number 08 (08L and 08R) and the other two: 09L, 09R.
Why 27?
ToddleRoad Airport has a runway with 27 number on it for three reasons.
- Two out of five busiest airports in the world have the 27 runway:
ATL (Hartsfield-Jackson Atlainta International Airport)
MEM (Memphis International Airport) - There is a 27 runway on an international airport on each continent:
AMS Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in Europe (Netherlands)
ORD Chicago O'Hare International Airport in North America (USA)
SLZ Marechal Cunha Machado International Airport in South America (Brazil)
MEL Melbourne Airport in Australia (Australia)
DEL Indira Gandhi International Airport in Asia (India)
ALG Houari Boumedine International Airport in Africa (Algiers) - There is 27 runway in on of the airports in the busiest city destination:
LHR Heathrow Airport in London, UK (Europe)