They are used to provide directions to remote locations like cargo areas, civil aviation areas, runways, terminals, and fixed-base operators. It’s a lot to learn, and your safety and ability to successfully navigate the maze of an airport depend on it, so let’s get started.Īll airport signs fall under one of the following 6 categories: destination signs, direction signs, information signs, location signs, mandatory instruction signs and runway distance remaining signs.ĭestination signs have a yellow background with black text and arrows. Once you have finished reading this article, you will be familiar with the sign categories, individual signs, how to recognize them, how to read them, what each means, and what action to take when you see them. There are 6 categories of airport signs that you will encounter as a pilot.Įach has a different purpose and can be identified by its distinctive background color, text color and the type of information that it conveys. Now that you know a little more about the basics of naming conventions, let’s get into how that information is transmitted to you via signs. Look to your left, then to your right, and you will be able to see all the relevant signage that pertains to you.

That means that if signs aren’t easily visible from the cockpit and don’t provide clear, easy to understand information and directions, they are failing to meet their purpose. The good news is that the whole purpose of airport signs is to guide you, the pilot. The location of other signs and the physical configuration of the airfield also come into play when the airport operator is determining sign placements. Other types can be on the right or the left depending on what type of information they are providing. Some types of signs will only be located on the left. The first place to look for a sign is on the left side of the runway. If you fly into a more primitive airport, you will find that grass strip runways are designated with a “G” suffix. If there are more than 3 parallel runways, the general rule of thumb is for the airport to increase or decrease the numerical designation of the additional runway(s) by one.įor example, 6 parallel runways at heading 270 could be named 27L, 27C, 27R, 28L, 28C and 28R. To differentiate between them, they are given alphabetical suffixes of either “L,” “R,” or “C.” These suffixes stand for “left,” “right,” and “center.” Up to three parallel runways can share the same numerical designation. The approach on the opposite end of that runway would be the reciprocal heading of 270, so it would be named Runway 27. That means that if a runway is at heading 093, it would be named Runway 9. The heading is rounded and shortened to the first two digits. Runway numbers are generally determined by their magnetic compass heading (at least in the United States). That means that Taxiway B would be referred to as “Taxiway Bravo.” Runway naming conventions When reading the names of taxiways, use the NATO phonetic alphabet. The letters “I, O and X” are also not allowed to be used for taxiway naming since they can create confusion and lead a pilot to read them as a runway number or an indication of a closed runway or taxiway.

What you won’t see are double-different alphabet letters like “AB, BC, CD, DE, etc.” Taxiway designations start out with a single alphabet letter, although at larger airports, you may start seeing double-same alphabet letters or alphanumeric identifiers because of the sheer number of taxiways.īecause of this, “AA, BB, CC, DD, EE or A2, A3, A4, etc.” also refer to taxiways. That means that if you see “9, 17, 27, 35, etc.,” the sign is referring to a runway. Taxiways, on the other hand, have alphabetic designations.

Runways are always designated numerically. How runways and taxiways are namedįirst up, do you know how to tell the difference between a runway designation and a taxiway designation just by looking at the name? This will set you up for success later on when we get into the details. Before we dive into the specifics of airport signs, let’s review the basics of airport layouts and naming conventions.

Runway numbers are based on