Originally Posted by
milski
That's 3 degrees tolerance between the expected runway number and the runway heading. For example, a runway can have a heading of 256 and still be 25 but when it becomes aligned with 259 it will have to be renumbered to 26. Exceptions apply for cases when the runway number is used to distinguish between runways with the same heading (SLC, LAX, DFW, etc.)
Your theory makes no sense...and here's the example you're talking about, where runway 12R at KHOU is heading 129:
http://flightaware.com/resources/air...OC+RWY+12R/pdf