Determing Dep and Arr Runways

[EHM-0787 Mark]

Hi Euroharmony-ers,

I was wondering if there was an on-line way of determing departure and arrival runways before we get into Flight Sim?  In the real world, pilots know (I presume through their METAR/ACARS) what the runways will be prior to takeoff (as part of their planning).  Is there some way we can find out?

Cheers,
Mark B.
EHM-0787

[EHM-1671 Ben]

In the FLogger, there is something about selecting runways, but I've never used it. I don't acutally know what it's for...

[EHM-0654 Murray]

Mark,

d**n good question... For offline flight, your only choice would be to look for a weather report for dep/dest and try to figure out the runways that way... easy for fields with a single runway, more difficult if they have multiple runways and/or specific procedures for choosing the active.

If you are flying online, and both dep/dest have APP/DEP or lower facilities open, you can use ServInfo/IvAe to get the controllers ATIS prior to flying; otherwise, you're stuck with using teh intarweb to look for local procedures information.

Hope that helps you some.

[EHM-1798 Conrad]

Adding to Murray's post, some airports may have selected runways to be used in certain conditions - ie Heathrow will favour 27R/L if the wind is less than 5knts and a dry surface - even if the wind tail wind for the pilots.

Other than that IVAE (eye of ivao) using the metar search will be usefull and look at charts to see what runways the airport has.

[EHM-0787 Mark]

Thanks to both of you.

I continued to do some research and came across a program called ATCA (ATC-Help) on AVSIM.  It downloads the METAR for a region and indicates the preferred departure and arrival runways.  I know it is for VATSIM / IVAO, but should work with offline flightsim (I'm an offline flyer).