Originally Posted by
Cough
One aspect that's advantageous when you've got multiple non intersecting runways is when you have some sort of destructive emergency on departure, say uncontained engine failure. Having left a trail of parts over the departure runway you can of course simply reland on the other runway. Now if it's truly a single runway airport, of course you can get it all picked up (once the hot parts are cool enough) and then you can land back. But there is a case if you've GOT to reland ASAP then multi runways are better.
It happened at Gatwick about 1982. A Northwest 747 was shedding turbine blades on take-off. IIRC it diverted to Heathrow and it took quite a while to pick up all the debris. I think they did a "FOD Plod".