"Greg Farris" wrote in message
...
The same thing
happens at any major airport, changing to the other runway is quite a
production.

Yeah, I was a passenger on a commercial flight into Schiphol (Amsterdam)
last year; the captain came onto the intercom to say: "We were second in
line to land, and they just changed runways on us". Took us the best part of
15-20 minutes to muck about and get down.

I have also seen airports where the apron and terminal are all the way on
one end of the runway. In these cases pilots sometimesprefer to take a
slight tailwind to land toward their destination, rather than have to
taxi back.

We used to see this a lot at Norwich (probably still do if they've reopened
04 - last time I flew there it was shut for maintenance). The main runway is
27/09, but we also have 04/22. The terminal is right at the starting end of
04 (in fact, there's a displaced threshold because the terminal building is
in the way). So the smaller commercial aircraft, particularly those heading
to Amsterdam, would often choose 04 if the wind was within limits, because
it was only a 60-second taxi and a quick right turn instead of a drive
around the airfield.

D.