dreams

[totient]

Last night I dreamt of getting nerdsniped.

In my dream, I'd just flown in to DCA and wanted to send a message that I'd arrived. Often when I do this, I say what runway I've landed on, but in my dream I didn't know whether I'd landed on 23L or 23R and kept going deeper into map ratholes to try to figure out which it had been.

Mind you, DCA doesn't have even one runway labeled 23. If it did, it's hard to imagine how you'd set up an approach for a commercial airliner on the corresponding heading (230, aka "southeast") that didn't pass through restricted airspace. And also all the runways at DCA intersect -- there's *definitely* not room for two parallel runways at any heading.

You'll notice it's rather late in the day for a dreams post. I might have gotten a little bit nerdsniped putting this post together, too.

Comments

[frotz]

DCA has a 22 which runs even closer to problematic airspace than a hypothetical 23, but it gets used for arrivals almost never. 4 gets used for occasional departures, but even sketchier is that 01 also gets used for northeast departures with a hard right turn after takeoff.

There used to be a charted visual approach down the Anacostia River for 22 that's less sketchy routing-wise than the Potomac River approach for 19, but the real problem with 22 is that it's too short for most arrivals.

Given magnetic pole drift 22 (which used to be 21) will probably become 23 within a few decades.

[totient]

Well right now 22 looks like this:


I suppose they'll finish it eventually, and maybe it'll even be enough longer that you could land an airliner on it. But I'd still rather be on a flight that took a dogleg right after takeoff than one that did it right before landing.