Runway

Strip of hard material (often asphalt) on an airport on which aircraft can take off or perform a landing.

Large airports have several runways. Usually identified by the direction in which they point, 36 would stand for 360 degrees, 9 for 90 degrees and 17 for 170 degrees, all clockwise from North. For each runway there are in principal two possible directions of taking off and landing and two numbers to identify the runway, e.g. 05 and 23 are the same.

If there is more than one runway pointing in the same direction, they are identified by the letters L, C and R, for Left, Center and Right.

Both for take off and landing, the preferred direction is against the wind.