Steve Foley writes:

Take off into the wind. There's a good chance the prevailing winds are from
the west, so most take-offs would be toward the west. If the wind was from
the south on Monday night, they would have taken off to the south.

All of the runways at LAX are east-west. At night aircraft are directed over
the water for both arrivals and departures unless there's quite a strong wind
from the west. Heavies don't care much about light winds.

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