What about the runways everyone forgot?
Tartare's very interesting assembly of cross-wind landings highlights a problem in many of the world's airports where the main runway alignment is selected to line up with the prevailing winds and there's nothing else to land on when the wind doesn't oblige.
Today at Cardiff Airport for example several flights had to be diverted or delayed because of high crosswinds which made landing on the main runway almost impossible.
But this begs the question - what about the other runway?. After all, most UK airports started life as RAF bases where there'd always be two runways in a cruciform formation at about 90 degrees to each other. If one runway was out because of crosswinds then the one aligned at 90 degrees to it would have far less of a problem. Maybe those old RAF guys knew a thing or two.
In civilian life many airports seem to have progressively concentrated on just the main east/west-aligned runway and forgotten all about the other one. Were they right to do so? Maybe there'd be fewer white-knuckle landings if the old layout had been retained .