Circular Runways

came across this idea today and thought I would share it with all of you fellow airplane fans out there. The idea is an “endless” circular runway, the video explains the idea in more detail.

here is a link to it on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNbtHxjOXe0

and a link to there website http://www.endlessrunway-project.eu/

It’s an interesting idea that I, no pun intended, don’t think will take off. let me know what you guys think.

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I’ve been seeing this around!!

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Pure Nonsense.

-Imagine an emergency landing in such a runway.
-Imagine an engine failure (or similar) resulting in the inner wingtip stucking the ground.
-What about ILS with such a runway, and the instrumental departures and arrivals routes (SID and STARs).
-They say (in some places, haven’t seen that specific video) that it will allow for simultaneous operations in the same runway, what could possibly go wrong?

Just to mention a few.

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I do even think a plane could land on a circular runway unless it has modified landing gear. This is just plain stupid, it will never happen.

Develop Vertical Landing is much easier than this…

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Nah, it’s banked, so assuming nothing goes wrong and no gusts the physics works out fine for a normal plane.

The problem is that all of the things that could go wrong and be a little bad on a straight runway go horribly wrong on a circle. Besides which a visual approach would likely be ridiculously hard to get right.

Vertical landing using the current technology is just useless and uneconomical. VTOL jets have sky rocketing maintainanece costs along with reduced performance (speed and flexibility).

Using that in passenger jets will prove out to be more costly than the Concorde. Using the current technology we can create a mini VTOL GA aircraft but not huge planes like B737/A320 or B747/A380.

Probably in future with better technology we can see VTOL high capacity aircrafts.

(Even i have some ideas for the concept. I am not going to tell them, you may steal them😂… Ok just a part, my idea uses the fusion technology and ion engines which aren’t ready yet, and won’t​ be fully ready before 2050).

I have seen this floating around on Facebook. Seems like a good idea, but it isn’t very practicle As said above there are many different things they would have to get sorted, and make sure is very safe for this to be even looked at by an airport.

Frankly speaking this makes no sense whatsoever to me… The circular runway idea exists for a very long time already and they came up with very good improvements for the real aviation life such as better air traffic control, more effective planning of SIDs and STARs, a project for airport ground movement indications called “Surface Movement Radar” (similar to the ASDE in the US) and other stuff. They do a great job in the research and development field but I doubt that a circular runway is any good… You guys named already various limitations - to add one additional: What about wind? If Aircraft 1 is facing the wind, Aircraft 2,3 and 4 are having crosswinds or tailwind. That being said, tailwind limitation is (as far as I remember) 10kn.

That last point is actually the strong point of this runway, you can line up for a perfect wind, since you can land at any angle. Strong wind from the North? Goodbye crosswind landing, hello headwind landing

Yea, I get the initial idea but with that approach you would have only one single runway which is, as far as I understood the concept, not the “selling point” :slight_smile: I mean… this thing is huge and cost probably way more than a single runway. You can’t even extend the airport. So you would actually have to rely fully on the weather conditions.

What about on gusty days where the wind is variable, one minute you’ve got a headwind, next minute you’ve had a sideways gust and your wingtip almost hits the ground, in the normal runway it’s a huge danger but you can immediately go full throttle and climb away. As you’re in a turn and the top of the runway is potentially above you, you have to do a climbing turnout which not only increases the chance of you stalling out one wing but also if there’s the other two aircraft on the runway you’ve gone round far too far and risk incurring on their space…

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Except for being able to line up against the wind, what benefits does this have? Unless you have multiple planes on the same runway (not exactly safe) you’re just taking up extra space that could fit several regular runways. Apologies if I missed something.

As I understood it, this is exactly what its all about - as you have a “longer” runway with multiple takeoffs and landings possible at the same time, you save space. Additionally they claim that the airspace gets more clear as aircrafts can approach from different angles without the need of flying STARs (which makes no sense to me as well)…

You guys have brought up some points I hadn’t even thought of. I think the risks outweigh the rewards on this however, I think landing a jumbojet on a tilted runnway must be the commercial equivalent to landing on an aircraft carrier.

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I saw this a couple months ago on the bbc website, very intresting though :+1: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Hi guys!

Thought I’d comment on this. I’ve seen this video around. It’s an interesting concept. Yes, the implementation of an instrument landing system would be interesting. I don’t see how they could do it unless they put the ground equipment in motion relative to the position of the aircraft. Seems complicated.

Also, the speed would increase quite a bit during landing, since you’re landing in a bank. Your wing loading would get pretty high at those bank angles, causing a pretty considerable increase in Vso speed. You’d probably be landing about 30% faster.

Another consideration of landing in a bank like that, you’d probably have to initiate the bank and maintain it while at a pretty low altitude. That could be concerning, as you don’t really want to be deploying spoilers at such a low level, which most heavy aircraft do to assist in changing the roll angle.

It would be tricky, and probably more trouble than its worth. The only real advantage is being able to land multiple aircraft on the same circular runway at once, but for the size of the runway coverage, multiple straight runways into the prevailing winds would probably be a better use of the land. Remember also, runway maintenance needs to be done more often than you might think. How do you close off a portion of a circular runway for maintenance?

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You start with a headwind but then as you go around you get a crosswind and then a tailwind which is more dangerous than a normal straight runway

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But, even if you land 30 % faster, the runway is endless so you can keep going around

Another thing is, what if one plane crashes into another because they are going at different speeds, creating a colision? So many things could go wrong, circular runway are never gonna happen