U turn on runway?
 

Just landed in YOW on a flight from YYZ and it's 7:30 in the morning. By the amount of reverse thrust and braking the captain used on landing, he was clearly trying shorten the landing distance and get to the gate faster. He missed the first taxi exit.. and to my surprise he did a U turn on the runway. Has anyone had this experience before? Not in my 15 years of travel. I think they'll probably have to get ATC approval before doing it and it's early in the morning??

Regards,
Empress

Some of the Carribean airports don't have taxiways, so you have to make a U-turn to taxi back to the terminal. Also, made a U-turn in PHL last March... we had been holding because of wx delays, then the crew was about to expire for the day, so we taxied down the runway to go to the terminal, but then the wx cleared and the crew decided to fly it, and did a u-turn to get back to the end of the runway for take-off.

Never in the US, but as burkey said, had it happen every time in St. Maarten.

U turns on the runway occur often in Jersey, Channel Islands, a popular holiday destination of the English. A poster at the airport explains the proposed new stronger taxiway that will eliminate this maneuver.

U-Turns on runways are quite common at some far flung airports that have no taxi-ways due to space limitations. St. Maarten, St. Barts, Saba, Nevis, Seychelles, Male (Maldives) are among them known to me. Of course after landing at St. Barts which is an extreme experience, you will forget all about the u-turn!

Yes, I have seen this. A couple of times on small planes at CRW, where I think the taxiway doesn't quite extend the full length of the runway, and once at ROC in a 737 because the taxiway was under construction.

I experienced the u-turn once on a flight from MUC to CTA (Catania, Sicily). Apparently there's not much room at the end of the field -- as we turned I could see the end of the runway pretty close!

jet,
Do you fly into CRW very often?

Hve experienced this twice when construction
was in progress. Seems like airports require a grest deal of construction/repair.

I watched a US Gvt VIP 737 doing short field work at Morgantown WV. They would stop past the last taxiway (at least the last one they could use) and need to U turn to get back to a taxiway.

U-turns on an active runway take a fair bit of runway time - wouldn't happen at LAX.

Tom

newself,

I was in Charleston, WV for the first three months of this year for work. Unfortunately, I didn't find the social opportunities too rewarding in the area so I left every weekend, except the first and the last, that I was there. That is why I got to fly out of and into CRW so many times. On the last approach (peeking over the shoulders of the J31 crew) I saw the runway and I thought, "I'll probably never see this again..."

I get to do U-turns all the time on many smaller airport runways in Canada. Even occasionally has happened on a major airport (Calgary, Edmonton) but this tends to be rare.

I think the pilot was just lazy because the next taxiway was at the other end of the runway I found out at takeoff from YOW. I thought the plane was going off the runway when he started the U turn and he must have killed the brakes with the force I felt.

Regards,
Empress

Yes, very common at smaler airports. They do it a lot at my home airport, VPS.

Arrived at BWI last weekend in a 737 shuttle, and the pilot did a 180 degree turn on the runway to take an exit that was a reverse to the direction of travel. I could see the next plane approaching the runway as we turned. We were running late (now there's a surprise).

Tim