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I'm hesitant to comment because while I'm an aviation fan I really know very little. I subscribe to VAS Aviation and Blancolirio where a lot of these incidents are reported and analyzed and one thing that continually strikes me is that the architecture of airport runways seems like an incredible arsenal of footguns.

The way the runways intersect each other and parallel each other creating the need for complex and sometimes dangerous intersections seems like such an unfortunate and possibly unsolvable problem. Airports are forced by economic and logistical necessity into spaces that are really too small to solve these issues with better layout and that means the solutions "have" to be found in process or technology.

I've encountered constraints like this so often in software but mercifully I've never worked on anything with life or death consequences.




The parallel nature is caused by the realities of wind; you don’t want to be doing crosswind activities unless forced to.

Even airports with “unlimited” space have parallel runways and resulting taxiways.


Being a pilot: not that hard in reality.

There are even uncontrolled airports with intersecting runways.

Cars have a way harder time handling red lights than ATC does dealing with runway crossings, at least from a number of dead people point of view.




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