You’ll notice the Cavern City (CNM) airport features a longest runway of 7800 feet, obviously less than the 8,070 feet needed for the “rectangle shaped” airport icon on the Sectional chart. Fly Safe, I found this during the research for this blog post… So, as Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, “Now you know the rest of the story…”
Once a runway reaches 8,070 feet, rounded to 8,100 feet the runway would stretch beyond the limits of the circle, thus the circle is dropped in lieu of outlines for the runways, or the “rectangle effect”. Thus, the size of the circle chosen for the airport icon on sectional charts allows for a runway that is up to 8,069 feet long to be shown to scale.
So a runway that is on the shorter side, say 3500 feet would appear as shorter within the circle airport icon, where as an airport icon for an airport with a runway more than 7,000 feet long would show the runway stretching almost entirely across the circle. Thus, what is displayed within the airport icon is what the pilot sees out the window, further the entire runway complex layout, even closed runways, are included and shown to scale. These box and circle outlines are color coded with magenta icons indicating that the airport does not have a control tower, whereas airports shown in blue feature a control tower.Ĭircled in yellow is the runway length for the North Central West Virginia airport (CKB), 7800 feet, a quick look at the airport icon shows that the runway which runway roughly Northeast to Southwest stretches almost all the way across the airport icon circle.
Some of the studious pilots that have spent considerable time reading the aeronautical chart legend may even know that airports with runways longer than 8,069 feet are those shown with the outlining around the runway complex in the approximate shapes of rectangles, where as airports with hard-surface runways in length from 1,500 feet to 8,069 feet are shown with the runway complex inlayed in a circle shape. One of the key items on all aeronautical charts is the airports… Most pilots know that airports with long runways are shown with a box-shaped icon outlining the runway complex, whereas airports that feature shorter runways are displayed with the runway complex within a circle. But, before you read ahead, do you notice anything odd about it?Ī quick glance at a sectional chart will show a plethora of information for pilots. We’ll revisit this airport later in the post.
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