In the early days of aviation, a crosswind landing was kind of an unknown thing. That’s because flying fields were large enough squares or circles to point the airplane directly into the wind or takeoff for landing. That standard persisted well into the 1930s until paved runways became more or less standard, at least at big airports.
But the concept of the circular runway, a segment of which would always be pointed upwind, surfaces from time to time as it does in this BBC video with Dutch aviation expert Henk Hesselink of the Netherlands Aerospace Centre. Fat chance it will ever happen, but it’s amusing nonetheless to consider the possibilities.
