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Dutch Scientist Proposes Circular Runways For Airport Efficiency (curbed.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: While airport terminal architecture has a solid history of style and innovation, rarely is a proposal put forth to utterly redesign the runway. But that's precisely the aim of Henk Hesselink, a Dutch scientist working with the Netherlands Aerospace Center. Dubbed the "endless runway," Hesselink's brainchild is a 360-degree landing strip measuring more than two miles in diameter. Since airplanes would be able to approach and take off from any direction around the proposed circle, they wouldn't have to fight against crosswinds. And three planes would be able to take off or land at the same time. Hesselink's team uses flight simulators and computerized calculations to test the unconventional design, and have determined that round airports would be more efficient than existing layouts. With a central terminal, the airport would only use about a third of the land of the typical airport with the same airplane capacity. And there's an added benefit to those living near airports: Flight paths could be more distributed, and thereby making plane noise more tolerable. BBC produced a video detailing Hesselink's circular runway concept. The concept is fascinating but there are many questions the video does not answer. Phil Derner Jr. from NYC Aviation writes via Business Insider about some of those unanswered questions in his article titled "Why the circular runway concept wouldn't work." The fundamental issues discussed in his report include banked runway issues, curved runway issues, navigation issues, and airspace issues. What do you think of Hesselink's concept? Do you think it is preposterous or shows promise?
Obviously you've never landed an airplane in the real world! Performing a banked approach is a standard procedure taught to all student pilots and is simple maneuver. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slip_%28aerodynamics%29#Sideslip
We Dutchies have the best marijuana in the world. Assuming he wasn't actually sober when he came up with the idea.
For the one benefit of your initial landing possibly being inline with the prevailing wind, you're adding dozens of safety issues, inefficiencies, and implementation issues.
The Navy tried that already in 1964. Popular Science ran an article about it: https://books.google.fr/books?...
Nobox: Only simple products.
The simulator community has you covered. And yeah, it works about as well as you can imagine (i.e. badly).
I have a feeling you aren't either...
While sims are mostly faithful to their airplane type in the air, on the ground and landing, it isn't the same. That is the one thing I tell my trainees: "I don't care about the landings in the sim beyond you not crashing." There are small differences between the sim and the real thing that throw off landings. Coupled with the lack of visual cues and environmental (seat of the pants) cues, it makes sim flying not quite the same.
All of us airline pilots have our normal landing technique in the plane, and our "sim landing" technique. At least, that's my experience among three types of airliners, 7000+ hours logged, and another 400 hours just in simulators.