Why are the runways laid mostly in E-W direction?

Question

While an airport may have more than one runways, we usually find that the main one runs E-W. Doesn't it affect the pilot's vision while taking off or landing with the sun shining in front?

Answer 1

They're not.

Airports are typically planned so that the runway most closely aligns with the prevalent windflows in the region for the majority of the year.

Many larger airports with multiple runways will have a crosswind runway for times when the wind is blowing more in one across the main runways than down them.

The Texas area I'm most familliar with typically has runways that are more or less N-S, but airports such as KDAL and KDFW do feature crosswind runways that allow smaller, municipal airports to send smaller, more crosswind prone aircraft to them in the event of solid crosswinds.

If you're getting fuel critical, and the wind is keeping you from getting in at your destination airport, you'll find a way to make it into a nearby airport that has a runway you can use. You become the master of finding something to block the sun.

I always wear a baseball cap, so between a combination of head twists and ducks, the bill works as a sun visor. As soon as I don't have to be flying into the sun, I'm turning to my destination airport, which with some luck, isn't into the rising or setting sun.

Having used some really cool auto-darkening welding masks, that weighed as much as my old mask, I think we'll eventually see autodarkening windscreens for aircraft. The darkness can be manually set, the timing of the delay between the first arc and darkening can be set.

If that doesn't make sense for an aircraft, I don't know what does.

Hope I managed to answer that for you.

Answer 2

Apparently you don't get around much. Most of the runways where I live run roughly north and south. The old airfields or flying fields as they were once called, were not paved, so in any wind condition you just pointed your craft into the wind and departed.
When some fellow came up with the idea of paved runways, it wasn't practical to pave the whole field which some even then were a mile square. After a lot of discussion, no doubt, it was decided to pave the runways so that you could take off into the wind most of the time. If you have only one runway, most of the time, the wind comes from that direction. Then someone came up with the idea of a crosswind runway, and so then was born the idea of multiple runways.
So, what it all boils down to wind direction.

Answer 3

Could it be that you're always supposed to try and take off and land going into the wind? And, that due to the Coriolis Effect caused by the earth's rotation, that most of the time there is a predominant easterly or westerly wind? Yes, there are things like Nor'easters, but usually a wind is more ENE or WSW than NE or SW.
And, until the pilot does the flare, he/she's looking down and not into the Sun.

Answer 4

A lot of the landing have to do with the weather. if the wind is coming from the West they will land that way. if the wind coming from any other way like North, East, or South. they will land with the wind.