How does runway surface affect landing performance?

Upsloping runways result in longer ground rolls during takeoff. Landing on upsloping runways can actually help deceleration, reducing the landing roll. The opposite is true for downsloping runways. Runway gradients can be found in the FAA's Chart Supplement.



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The runway surface for a specific airport is noted in the FAA's Chart Supplement. Any surface that is not hard and smooth increases the ground roll during takeoff. This is due to the inability of the tires to roll smoothly along the runway. Tires can sink into soft, grassy, or muddy runways.

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Actual landing distance is affected by various operational factors, including: High airport elevation or high density altitude, resulting in increased groundspeed; Runway gradient (i.e., slope); Runway condition (dry, wet or contaminated by standing water, slush, snow or ice);

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An up-slope runway will allow an aircraft to land in a shorter distance. A down-slope runway will require a greater landing distance. It will take longer for the aeroplane to touch down from 50 ft above the runway threshold, as the runway is falling away beneath the aeroplane.

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Pressure, temperature, and humidity have a great influence on aircraft performance because of their effect upon density. There is no rule-of-thumb or chart used to compute the effects of humidity on density altitude, but it must be taken into consideration.

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An uphill runway increases the takeoff run and a downhill runway increases the landing roll. An upslope of 2% adds 10% to your takeoff distance and a downslope of 2% decreases it by some 10%. So everything else being equal: takeoff downhill and land uphill.

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An uphill runway increases the takeoff run and a downhill runway increases the landing roll. An upslope of 2% adds 10% to your takeoff distance and a downslope of 2% decreases it by some 10%. So everything else being equal: takeoff downhill and land uphill.

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An uphill slope increases the take-off ground run, and a downhill slope increases the landing ground run. For example, an upslope of 2 percent increases take-off distance by about 15 percent and a 2 percent downslope decreases it by about 10 percent. Slopes can be calculated from known or estimated information.

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For example, landing on a 1500' runway with a 3.0% up-slope will give us an effective runway length, a performance length, of almost 2000' (1500' x 1.3 = 1950'). Landing downhill on that same runway will give us an effective runway length of just over 1000' (1500' x 0.7 = 1050').

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A good Rule of Thumb for estimating the advantage or disadvantage of a sloped runway is that a 1.0% runway gradient—an increase or decrease in altitude of 10' for every 1000' of runway length—is equivalent to a 10% increase or decrease in effective runway length.

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Runway Slope FAA utility airport design standards allow maximum grades of up to 2 percent, or about 1.2 degrees of slope.

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