Circular runways
 

Apologies if this link/story has already been shared:

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39643292

Pretty cool idea, no?

Wrong forum and IMO impractical in real life.

I think it's best summed up in one part of his response.

Just about every airport on the planet is built in a certain way. Are you going to now train every pilot in 2 ways of doing something? Only have certain pilots that could land at this one/subset of airports? Rebuild every airport overnight?

The gasoline engine is far from the best solution for driving. Many better solutions have arisen over the decades. But the road/gas station/gas pipelines/regulatory/etc. infrastructure make it much, much more difficult than "let's just start throwing hydrogen fuel cells in every car" and everything is good.

I have a bigger problem with it--it makes you put the plane down at a much more precise point than a normal runway. If you have 10,000' of runway and need 6,000' that means you can put it down anywhere in the first 4,000'. With this you have a much narrower window and thus much less ability to land in bad conditions. It would also probably be basically unusable to low-time GA pilots.

The big problem is the wind. As you go around the circle you would have to be constantly adjusting your heading relative to the runway curve to adjust for the wind angle changing and even worse, your ground speed in the air and air speed on the ground would be constantly changing as you move from head wind to cross wind to tail wind etc.

I would have a hard time coming up with an idea as stupid as this one.

I prefer to keep the wings mostly level at low speeds. Landing on a circular runway does not keep the wings level

I have an idea: let's take flying, something that is currently ridiculously safe in part thanks to worldwide standards and common procedures, and look for really goofy ways to make it unnecessarily more dangerous! :cool:

Also the big circle runs into problems if your traffic grows and you need to expand the terminal space...a lot easier to expand terminal/runway/apron space with straight runways rather than the circle.

I recall reading this somewhere about a month ago, thought it was FT, but for the life of me, can't find a thread about it.

I do appreciate the attempt at innovation. Although this may be doomed to fail as a viable idea, hopefully it does spur some additional feasible innovations.

Do you read Crankyflier? He had this as one of his "3 Links I Love" columns:

http://crankyflier.com/2017/03/24/3-...ulous-ratings/

I do, actually. That may have been it, but I thought there was more debate than what is in the comments section. Probably conflating it with another topic.

The only advantage of this is that it would probably remove the 739 from the skies. That plane can barely get off the ground and land as it is. Having to bank at the same time (which reduces lift) means having to go even faster, and increasing the chance of a tail strike.

This type of article reminds me of local sports radio hosts who have to drum up something to talk about for 4 hours....when they set up a straw man argument just to have something to talk about to fill time (or generate website hits in this case)

Host 1: Some people are saying that <local team player who is league average> is the best/worst in the league.

Host 2: Wow, that's crazy, I have been hearing that too...I didn't even believe it

Host 1: I know right, lets knock down the fictional argument that no one is making for the next hour until <local team's> back up Long Snapper will join us to talk the NFL Draft.

LOL. The only thing sillier than the runways is that Tempkin PR release. On a positive note, it appears that US Airways' customer satisfaction gains in 2016 have it well-poised to pass Airtran in 2017. :cool:

That actually may be the best way for a U.S. airline to increase its goodwill with the public: stop existing at all for a couple years.