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Why Airports Rename Runways When the Magnetic Poles Move (wired.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: For decades, pilots heading into or out of Wichita Eisenhower National Airport in southeast Kansas have had three runways to choose from: 1L/19R, 1R/19L, and 14/32. Now, at the orders of the FAA, the airport will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to give itself a makeover. Workers will repaint those huge numbers at the ends of each runway and replace copious signage. Pilots and air traffic controllers will study new reference manuals and approach plates, all updated to reflect an airport whose three runways have been renamed. World, meet 2L/20R, 2R/20L, and 15/33 -- which happen to be the same runways that have been welcoming planes since 1954.
This is not a "What's in a name?" situation. The runways may be the same sweet-smelling stretches of tarmac they've always been, but the world around them has changed. Well, the magnetic fields around the world have changed. The planet's magnetic poles -- the points that compasses recognize as north and south -- are always wandering about. That's a problem, because most runways are named for their magnetic headings. Take Wichita's 14/32. First off, because planes can land or take off from either direction, you can think of it as two runways: 14 and 32. (Pro tip: Pilots say "one-four" and "three-two," not 14 and 32.) If you're looking at a compass, one end is about 140 degrees off of north, counting clockwise. For simplicity's sake, the headings are rounded to the nearest five, and dropped to two digits. So if you're looking down at Wichita Eisenhower, runway 14/32 is the one running from the northwest to the southeast.
This is not a "What's in a name?" situation. The runways may be the same sweet-smelling stretches of tarmac they've always been, but the world around them has changed. Well, the magnetic fields around the world have changed. The planet's magnetic poles -- the points that compasses recognize as north and south -- are always wandering about. That's a problem, because most runways are named for their magnetic headings. Take Wichita's 14/32. First off, because planes can land or take off from either direction, you can think of it as two runways: 14 and 32. (Pro tip: Pilots say "one-four" and "three-two," not 14 and 32.) If you're looking at a compass, one end is about 140 degrees off of north, counting clockwise. For simplicity's sake, the headings are rounded to the nearest five, and dropped to two digits. So if you're looking down at Wichita Eisenhower, runway 14/32 is the one running from the northwest to the southeast.
How the fuck do they work?
Given that this is an error of only one degree it might be easier to move the runway, just add a little bit to one side and take a bit off the other.
The old general aviation runway at San Jose International Airport was runway 29. It was exactly parallel to runways 30R and 30L, they were just built at different times and the pole wandered. The pilots all knew the deal; it seems more confusing to change everything than for pilots to just deal with it.
E pluribus unum
As the Earth's climate evolves from historical cool to future greenhouse effect, I wonder if this could contribute to the evolution of the global geodynamo and accelerate the change in magnetic lines and eventual reversal of the poles? Yet more evidence of the effects of humankind on our world.
For simplicity's sake, the headings are rounded to the nearest five, and dropped to two digits.
This is not consistent with the names given i.e. '1' or '2' since these have only one digit remaining. Either these names should be '01' or '02' or the method is something even simpler: round to the nearest ten and drop the final zero.
... And?
Don't index your objects using Natural Keys that are a function of slowly changing values. Yes, the naming convention has a value in identifying location as a function of geographic location, but it's a function of a projected geolocation (magnetic field strength) that turns out to move.
Instead of spending all the money renaming/renumbering the runways, and renumbering them again a couple of decades from now, an engineer would say create a surrogate key that will be constant for all time. Heck, Alpha Beta Gamma, etc would be just as useful in this world of GPS.
It takes hundreds of thousands of dollars to paint new numbers? why not wait until they just need repainting?
With the advent of GPS and advancements in ground-based technology able to offer redundancy and higher accuracy, is there a reason we're still this concerned about maintaining a naming schema based on compass readings? Are there that many aircraft still in use today that use nothing but a compass for navigation?
This is kind of like making sure every new car sold comes with a paper map, and every new house comes with a printed copy of the Yellow Pages.
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"You are approved to land on runway Kardashian, lookout for cross traffic from runway Jenner"
If you don't use numbers, that will be the end result.
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So if you're looking down at Wichita Eisenhower, runway 14/32 is the one running from the northwest to the southeast.
Incorrect.
Runway 14 would be from the northwest to the southeast, and 32 is southeast to northwest.
Condescending cunt.
So, one, two, or three plane crashes before someone blames another miscommunication on fog? Just another airport for me to avoid. Love it.
I don't get it. One can easily save them the work of renaming the runways (painting and what-not) by inserting a ball bearing in the middle and magnets along the runway! It will automatically align to the magnetic field. Sshhh... some people.
The Runway Naming System allows pilots to send RNS requests to the local Runway Naming Service which of course run on the local Runway Naming Server (Be aware the same acronym holds several correct definitions). Also I t is appropriate to use the designation "RNS Server", "RNS Service", or "RNS System" even though it may be redundant.
These local RNS databases are owned by the airports and are synchronized with the root RNS server several layers up in the RNS hierarchy.
While planes may choose to make RNS requests directly from the root server, for traffic management (bandwidth, not air traffic) they are strongly encouraged to maintain their own local RNS server that caches RNS data from RNS servers at levels lower from the root and geographically local to them. This may be accomplished via RNS Zone Transfers.
It must also be remember that RNS name updates may take several hours to propagate through the RNS hierarchy and for all RNS servers to update with accurate information. So while pilots may have a local cached copy while in flight from their local RNS server, care must be made to verify the RNS data with the authoritative RNS server while approaching the destination airport.
As an example the Wichita "Gandalf" runway upon local RNS resolution currently returns 14/32.
There have been recent reports of RNS spoofing and RNS cache corruption attacks being used, as well as malicious RNS database updates pushed to the RNS root servers and propagated across the RNS network. We are currently working on the next generation of secure RNS Services known as RNSSEC.
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The molten iron core of Earth is to blame. All we need to do is wait for the magnetic north to be where we want it, then quickly cool the core so it solidifies in place.
Trolling is a art,
I suppose it would be too much to ask that runways be named by _compass_ directions rather than magnetic directions, and have the plane's compass + GPS internally compensate for the wandering poles via software updates? Well, I guess that would require every compass to be replaced. Never mind.
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Even with numbered runways, the occasinal pilot still goofs things up. They're supposed to check their compass against the runway numbers when they're at the takeoff point. Even so, one pilot long ago had his compass set not SIX degrees of magnetic variation, but SIXTY. Instead of landing in London they ended up running out of gas over the Sahara. Another time, a cargo plane took off in the 180 direction from Marseilles, and they crashed into a tall hill miles away.
Anthropomorphic magnetic pole shifting is a hoax! The poles have always been where they are, and the Fake Liberal Media just wants you to believe that they're moving to advance their left-wing agenda!
Have you read my blog lately?
Do they still use magnetic cpmpasses in commecial aviation?
Y thought it would be based a mountain
on GPS thwaw days
They were ysing inertial navigation systems in airliners back in the later 70's
when Air New Zealand were flying scenic trops to Antarctica
of course if someone transposed numbers when typing in the waypoints you could still run into
Circular runways are a great idea in theory. The problems are:
1. Repaving / maintenance takes much longer
2. Making a relatively level paved surface 6000' in diameter is tricky to say the least, and might be impossible in marshy areas
3. Keeping a runway of that size snow and ice-free is difficult
4. In rainy areas you need to carve metal-reinforced grooves into the asphalt for traction, which would be ungodly expensive to do in giant concentric circles
It's not like we don't know how to use true north. TVMDC, and all that. What with modern avionics, GPS, etc. you'd think they could deal with true north and not have this problem.
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Geologists are concerned that the magnetic poles might soon go through one of their cyclic reversals, flipping north and south. This would result in a number of years where the earth has no net magnetic field.
If that happens, the FAA will have to direct airports to rename every single runway in this country to "NULL".
The same thing happened at Burbank airport in California decades ago. Runway 7/25 shifted to runway 8/26 when the actual magnetic bearing passed through the midpoint between the two. I fly out of there and it took me ages not to get it wrong...
Thank God for Slashdot where this can be discussed, because the aviation boneheads who came up with the runway naming conventions obviously never thought any of this stuff through! Moreover, none of the reasoning has ever been documented by those (Government, naturally) selfsame boneheads.
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Irregular shadow shape, progression. Shadow is black, then changes color to reddish. Moon glow of uneclipsed portion increases as shadow becomes reddish, detail lost. Moon has no rotation(see Nikola Tesla): we always see the same face. Moon emits own light. Craters not from impacts: Too round.
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Reading this aviation stuf and the details in the comments reminds me of messing with AICC e-learning data back in 2002 and trying to convert it into XML or something other more useful. This was an amazing head-trip. You could smell the punchcards and hear the noise of the 60ies batch processors simply by looking at the raw data files. n-dimensional relations were (are) covered across files, data access based on column count, 126 character ASCII (and not a single one more!) more and some other awesome old-school sh*t. It's basically a data format from the steam age of computing. Very interesting, amazing and hilarious in a way but gawdawful annoying to work with in the microcomputer age.
Since Aviation was one of the first industries to have widespread adoption of mission critical electronic data processing this isn't all that surprising, but to be honest, they could really do with a complete redo of all their standards including this arcane runway naming scheme they apparently still have going.
That's just my impression anyway. ... ... Errrm ... maybe they *should* keep things as they are. ...
The offcial replacement for AICC data format btw. is SCROM, an XML based format from hell designed by the US DoD - so it's actually worse.
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When an airport has two parallel runways, they are often numbered differently in order to "avoid confusion". When landing at CDG, runways 26R and 27L are parallel.
Online sources of information are probably updated immediately when the runway numbers are repainted. However, many pilots fly with paper charts and airport directories. Either they fly old planes without modern avionics, or they simply want information that will survive a computer hardware failure. These paper documents expire in a few months and _should_ be replaced after expiration. For at least a few months (possibly longer), pilots rely on old information from paper charts and directories to get runway numbers for the airport they are using. If you are approaching XYZ airport and you see runway 19, but your airport directory says XYZ has runway 18 and 00 instead of 19 and 01, that's a problem..
It's not so bad at controlled airports, where pilots have to request landing clearance from air traffic control. The current runway number is given by ATC as part of that clearance. For example: "Cessna 236, cleared to land, runway 19". But at non-controlled airports, it's up to the pilot to broadcast his/her intention to land. There is room for confusion when the number painted on the ground does not match the paper chart. Some pilots would reasonably believe they have arrived at the wrong airport.
Better solution: Only land helicopters.
Actually, the poster seems to be absolutely correct. Here is the Google Maps image for the end of one of Edmonton Airport's runways in Canada clearly showing the leading '0' so Canada, like Europe, appears to require it. However, if you go south of the border to Helena in Montana then their runway does not contain a leading zero.
Consider JFK's longest runway. It's around 14,511 ft long. Even a 1 change will mean more than "a little bit to one side".
Also, runways are typically oriented with regard to prevailing wind direction, so moving the runway may not be optimal for landings and takeoffs.
That's 1 degree. Who knew /. cannot accept degree symbols?
All landings end with a pilot looking out the window and deciding "yeah, that looks about right". The magnetic compass and the data it generates are one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Yes, I'm aware of things like Category 2 ILS, but they don't do stuff like that unless they absolutely have to.
...laura
The runways must move to accommodate the poles shifting. Do I have to explain everything??
The magnetic pole shift just has to be caused by global warming, global colding, climate change, or whatever. The runways at Craig Field changed and now Wichita! The sky is falling!
Scientists already know about the climate change in the past and also already know about the previous magnetic reversals. You really think every one of those scientists is dumber than you, and you are the first to think about it? How about the simple fact that the times don't match, so it was tossed as junk right at the start.
WTF is the point of this article?
So they change runway designations every half-century due to changing magnetic declination. What is the big deal? How is this even newsworthy?
Anything that uses the earth's magnetic field needs to keep up to date with changing declination. Ever been a scout? Ever done any orienteering? Remember having to correct for it?
Holy crap, are their ANY nerds left in the tech industry? Or, have the hipsters totally taken over? "Like, OMG, you'll never guess what I just heard. Like, the earth's magnetic poles move. Fer real. Like, north ain't really north. Hella cray cray, yo. Now, let's go disrupt some industries with our stable geniusness. "
Pilots know about this and so do airports, it's a part of any navigation system.
Magnetic poles wander a little each year. Around most of the world that translates to a degree or so of drift per year (in some places it can be 2-3, if you're closer to the pole)
A 60-year old runway like at Wichita will have been renamed several times. Yes the signage needs changing but it needs periodic replacement due to weathering anyway.
Magnetic North vs True North is actually a thing. Since compasses are all magnetic (except for GPS-based compasses), you have to keep track of the angle of declination or you will be truly lost. And this number changes a lot, especially if you are looking at how much it changes "over decades." It's a thing, ask you backpacking friend who actually knows a thing or two about orienteering.
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