Two-Way Use of One Runway
I was watching the planes at DCA this afternoon (yes I'm a geek) and an infrequent thing happened again. Planes were taking off Rwy 01 to the north, but they fit one in to take off to the south on the same Rwy 19. It appeared that they waited until there was a long gap in arrivals. Since the "nonconforming" plane was an RJ IIRC, I couldn't understand a technical reason. The wind was at about 90-deg to the runway and not strong.
I'd seen this years ago when a 727 refused the direction in use because of being heavy and it would have been a tailwind takeoff.
I know of some airports where arrivals and departure are always in the reverse directions, but they generally don't have much traffic compared with one-a-minute DCA.
My question: do you folks often see "bothways" use of the active runway at heavily-used airports?