Originally Posted by
coxm
Did this on Valentine's Day 2008. LAX-CLT, then on to JAX. To start, I was driving down Supulveda, pulling into The Parking Spot, and watched a 747 taking off over Supulveda. Strange. Sitting in the US Club, you could hear the planes coming over. Very strange.
Boarded, and taxied for takeoff, pilot was really good at telling everyone that LAX was taking off east. Reason was super high Santa Ana winds. Right before the pilot started the roll-out, he re-announced to everyone that this was the correct take-off procedure. Still, there were a number of us frequent LAX flyers sitting on the edge of the seats. It was pretty cool with this unique experience, but very, very strange.
Pervailing winds very much favor west bound departures and landings at SAN and LAX.
I lived in SAN for over 20 years and still fly there 3-4 times a year to visit family. In all those years, I have never departed to the east and have landed to the east only once.
As to LAX, I used to watch replays on passur.com all the time. The LAX arrivals - late night - were usually cargo arrivals from places like SDF or OAK, very late arriving flights from the midwest/east hubs, and some Hawaii originating arrivals. And, yes, as I noted earlier, they land to the east. Flightaware confirms this.
http://www.passur.com/airportmonitor-locations.htm (no longer carries LAX feeds).