Good day. I am listening to the KLAX feed right now (07/09/08, 11:20AM Pacific Daylight Time) and I have noticed that the North side is departing from runway 24R and landing on 24L. Usually they depart from 24L and land on 24R. Anybody know why that would be? I've never noticed this before. Thanks.
Chananya
No inconsistency. In fact, they do both, constantly.
If you've noticed, there are a lot of Brasilias and Saabs that are run by Skywest and American Eagle, going up the central coast to SBA, SMX, SBP, etc. As they use the same SID as the jets going up to SFO, it brings up a problem with two solutions: 1) get them out of the jet's way, or 2) hold the jet on the runway, causing more delays in getting them off, while holding arrivals that are coming in to 24R. So, they opt for #1. Launch them from 24R, get them on a 270 heading at the LAX VOR, and keep them out of the VTU5 departure corridor. That frees up the jets to fly out on runway heading, and wait for their turn to VTU.
Same thing happens on the south side with the GA planes departing 25L. When operations permit and a 25L departure is needed, they'll switch the arrival to 25R. So you should hear a "change to and cleared to land runway XXX" quite often.
BL.
