Tampa International Airport will be renumbering their runways next week. The reason being the change in the magnetic variation in the area.
The North/South runway will be renamed from 18R/36L to 19R/01L.
This doesn’t happen very often, as in most cases the variation only changes (at the most) 1-2 degrees per 100 years. The closer you move to the poles the quicker this rate of change happens. As much as 1 degrees per year. This is why in Canadian Arctic airspace all runway designations are in degrees true.
More information can be found from tbo.com.
This happened a couple years ago at cykf, when 07/25 became 08/26. I still occasionally clear the ILS25 and have to correct myself
I was trying to find a Canadian reference but couldn’t. Thanks!
I heard a story about this on the radio. It seems that it’s not just local variations coming into play, the magnetic north pole is actually moving towards Sibera. (Is everything leaving Canada?) In Virginia KROA has changed recently.– Cessna 182 Driver
Blake:
This happened on January 13 at Oshawa!
See the COPA Flight 70 website for info:
“After much construction, the crosswind runway has been moved to better align it with the prevailing winds ;-)”
(Or we could tell residents of houses under the approach that we wanted to spare them some noise.)
http://copa70.com/new/
John