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A comment on Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes. Parent comment

Re:Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes by hugh3 on Friday January 07, 2011 @11:20AM (#2079939)
This is all fine and dandy until the next geomagnetic reversal, at which point we suddenly find everything 180 degrees out of phase.
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Re:Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes by AndrewDucker on Friday January 07, 2011 @11:24AM (#2079956)
Thankfully, runways are numbered with _both_ numbers. So 18/36 or 9/27. Total reversal would leave the numbers the same...
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Re:Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes by yogipatel on Friday January 07, 2011 @01:39PM (#2080541)
No, they'd still have to be swapped (under the current scheme of runway numbering). If you're landing on runway 18, you know your compass better be reading ~180° (after correction for deviation). Similarly, when taking off from runway 18, your compass should read the same.

You can see just how much the magnetic variation changes around the world in this graphic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earth_Magnetic_Field_Decli...

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Re:Tampa Airport: Moving magnetic poles forces runway changes by rlpb on Friday January 07, 2011 @12:42PM (#2080253)
Each number labels one direction/end, so they'd still have to be swapped round.
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