And the most common runway is...

jpower

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18/36. There are 1,919 of them in the US.

...so I was bored. Sue me.
 
already changed at KHWO, Hollywood/N. Perry. We have two N/S and two E/W runways. This can be confusing as there are now 01 L or R and 10 L or R.
 
The raw numbers are actually pretty interesting, but to spare you having to look at lots of numbers, I made a chart:

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I'd expect 9/27 and other E/W runways to make it pretty high up there, and I was not at all expecting the impressive N/S dominance. 18/36, 17/35, and 16/34 are three of the top four, with 18/36 way out in front.
 

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2/20 being second from the bottom really surprises me. There are quite a few in this area.
 
Interesting here in TX it seems 17/35 and 18/36 are everywhere
I haven't flown anywhere else. Would be interesting to see what is dominant in different locations.
 
Pretty much every runway around here is 18/36 with the occasional 17/35...KBEC had 18/36, but last year, it was changed to 1/19...Until about 5 years ago, my airport (1K1) was 16/34...Magnetic variation at work...
 
another vote for 5/23. a lot of those 'round here I reckon.
 
Interesting here in TX it seems 17/35 and 18/36 are everywhere
I haven't flown anywhere else. Would be interesting to see what is dominant in different locations.
On the Texas gulf coast, the winds are almost always out of the South Southeast. Lots of RWY 12/30s and 13/31s down here.

In 4.5 years here, I can count the number of times I've used the NW runways on two hands. (Today would be one of those days!)
 
I loved training on 14/32, all those many years ago. Can't remember why, except that I liked the combination, I suppose but your thread reminded me of my fondness for that runway.
 
The raw numbers are actually pretty interesting, but to spare you having to look at lots of numbers, I made a chart:

attachment.php


I'd expect 9/27 and other E/W runways to make it pretty high up there, and I was not at all expecting the impressive N/S dominance. 18/36, 17/35, and 16/34 are three of the top four, with 18/36 way out in front.

The entire plains area, your strong winds will be N/S, many storms will have a N/S component all over the country. So, even though the N/S runway may not be the primary runway many places, it is there for when it's needed. That's likely why it's the most pervasive.
 
Does this chart include float plane bases? :goofy:
 
Does this chart include float plane bases? :goofy:

Nope, but here's the data!

9W/27W: 12
18W/36W: 12
4W/22W: 9
13W/31W: 6
17W/35W: 6
5W/23W: 5
16W/34W: 5
14W/32W: 4
8W/26W: 4
3W/21W: 4
6W/24W: 4
2W/20W: 3
11W/29W: 2
15W/33W: 2
1W/19W: 2
12W/30W: 2
7W/25W: 1
 
I loved training on 14/32, all those many years ago. Can't remember why, except that I liked the combination, I suppose but your thread reminded me of my fondness for that runway.

I did my CFI,CFII and multi with a 14/32 (5/23 crosswind runway that we rarely used) all the others with 4/22R/L. It's amazing the things you remembers!
 
I've attached the raw output file to this post for anyone interested in seeing the whole picture. There are some pretty weird runways (there's even a 13/32!), and some looks like issues with the data I got. I wrote a program in Python to get the data from AirNav for each airport and tally them up, so whatever errors are there are from AirNav, not my code :D.

And yeah I'd also be interested to see how it's distributed geographically. If anyone wants to, feel free to add in that capability (pm for the code and the airport codes file). I might at some point, but I don't have the time right now.
 

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Two most common for me are 17/35 and 14/32.
 
Does this chart include float plane bases? :goofy:

Lol, but there are some water runways out there that are trenches dug out next to runways where they needed the fill to build up the runway base. If you look at WWII archive pictures, you'll see more than you do nowadays.
 
Impressive data mining and analysis.

But what will you do with your time the first snow day?
 
You might be able to parlay this into an Embry Riddle Master's thesis.:lol:
 
Take the park of he country with the hugest concentration of airports and determine their prevailing winds. That's the Midwest.

Also in much of the flatland country, roads are layer out in grids, N S and E W. Often runways are aligned with the geography (particularly private strips), so a diagonal runway wastes space.

What would b interesting to see is a distribution of ops based on runways used.
 
In SW PA, we see a lot of NE-SW runways, especially along the ridge line. The further west toward Pittsburgh, the N/S runways start to show up.

My home field is 05/23. We had a shorter 03/21 runway, but the airport shut it down. They don't feel like taking care of it.
 
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