Determining Active Runways in Advance ... Myth? ... Reality?

[tipek]

Did you ever concidered checking weather site on the internet? Thats what I do before I even hit the road.
Its hard to rely on websites for accurate weather (cloudy, sunny etc.), but the winds are pretty much very accurate.

Rafal

[AirtrafficController]

yea planes always land into the wind and so do take-offs

[shamrock838]

Did you ever concidered checking weather site on the internet? Thats what I do before I even hit the road.
Its hard to rely on websites for accurate weather (cloudy, sunny etc.), but the winds are pretty much very accurate.
Rafal

Actually that's the first place I looked. But then I was at McNeil Park in College Point recently looking over to LGA. Traffic was landing and taking off steadily on runway 4 with the wind out of the NE.

In less than 30 minutes the wind apparently shifted 180 degrees to the SW since they were landing and taking off on runway 22. That's a lot of wind shift in an awfully short time ...

In fact I was on my way over to Plane View Park to catch the landings on 4 ... and ended up catching the takeoffs. Go figure.

Mike (shamrock838)

PS - Now I check the airport ATIS recordings either by scanner or cell phone.