JerryFF

In more than 30 years of flying in and out of LAX I have never seen this in practice. While theoretically possible in light winds, as you say, it would be a nightmare for air traffic control, both on the ground and in the air.

Hawaiian717

It is preferable to land and take off into the wind. Since the prevailing winds at LAX are from west to east, coming off the ocean, this favors LAX operations to take off over the ocean. They switch around nightly for noise abatement assuming the winds aren't too strong, and during "Santa Ana" conditions when the wind direction at LAX changes to come from the east.

FlyinHawaiian

happiest_at_40000

I know this thread is very old, not sure if anyone will catch this... But I was just wondering in the overnight hours if they turn the planes around so that they come from the ocean and land to the East then what happens for the planes taking off......Dont they have to be going the same way so there are no issues or confusions. So even if landing planes land to the east to help decrease noise for residents near Lax then wouldnt all the planes taking off during these overnight hours be taking off to the East thus making the same noise that planes landing west would have made?

Also, what is the amount of wind that is too much for them to turn the landing planes to land east at night? Was just curious is there some magic number that if the winds are that amount from the ocean then the planes have to land west regardless of the noise for residents?

Thanks in advance !

TWA884

Efforts to Reduce or Limit Aircraft Noise at LAXAlso check:

happiest_at_40000

That link was great, explains everything I was wondering. Thank you. Just wish I realized I could magnify it up a lot earlier than I did. My eyes are killing me now lol

chrisl137

As a minor aside to whether they have to be going the same way - ATC handles some pretty complicated patterns these days. A google search will show the complicated approaches and departures for the SF Bay Area. BOS even runs crossing runways with heavy arrival/departure traffic. Planes taking of and landing at LAX in opposite directions is pretty trivial by comparison. It can be entertaining to watch airports on the flight tracker sites for a while and see the arrival/departure patterns, too.

FlyinHawaiian

At LAX and right now the departures are using Runways 6 and 7, taking off to the East. Really crappy conditions; windy and pouring rain with really low ceilings.

A JAL 777 just did a go-around after experiencing wind shear on the approach.

FlyinHawaiian

The storms over the past few days have led to extended operations using the 06/07 runway configuration including as we speak. Bad for the In-N-Out crowd, but the spotters on the hill in El Segundo should be happy.

TWA884

I flew in from ORD Wednesday night. For a while, it appeared as if we were going to land 30 some minutes early. All of a sudden, our arrival time changed by 20 minutes and I saw SoFi Stadium a few thousand feet, instead of a couple of hundred feet, below us. This was the first time that I recall landing from the west, at least while seating by the window. Even though the storm was moving in, there was a clear view the coastline and the mountains all the way to Malibu. As we were taxiing, I could see planes taking off to the east.

FlyinHawaiian

Listening to the YouTube livestreams, LAX is getting a lot of traffic diverted from SFO due to the storm and a pending POTUS departure that will suspend operations on the north side for a bit. Fun times at LAX!

chrisl137

That's kind of surprising - as far as I can tell, LAX is getting significantly more rain than SFO, and they've been running over-ocean ops all day instead of the usual approach. I guess SFO is more sensitive to weather, though (which is why I won't connect through there). The north side of LAX already has reduced capacity with the construction that's been going on 24R/6L.

jerry a. laska

SFO's problem at the moment is wind and a runway being closed for construction.

bzcat

I think SFO's switches to western approach on cross runways during inclement weather with winds from the south or east. But the cross runways have lower capacity than the normal southern approach over water and also has lower limits so if wind speed picks up, they have to suspend operation. This is probably why a lot of flights end up diverting to LAX.

There may be more rain at LAX than SFO but LAX reverse flow doesn't reduce operating capacity and we don't have lower limits due to direction change. I can see long haul flights to SFO don't want to take the chance and be in hold for 4 hours.

chrisl137

If a butterfly flaps its wings in the wrong place in Marin it breaks everything at SFO.