Runway naming at Eindhoven: Runway 041

[ross_M]

I came across this snippet in an accident report

The Boeing 737-800 operated by Ryanair was taking off from runway 041 on the 4th of June 2010 at Eindhoven Airport, the Netherlands.

Which direction would a "041" runway be in? Adding the zero doesn't seem to make sense in degrees.

Is this just a typo? (Using Wikipedia I suspect a Runway 4/22 )

[gusting_45]

well it's not possible to have runway 41 so it would seem like the answer was pretty self-evident.

[Sobelena]

It is runway 04. However, the 041 comes from the actual magnetic heading of the runway (i.e. 041-221).

[gobfa]

Looking at the report, the figure 1 after 04 is in fact a figure 1 of a smaller case which refers you to the bottom of the page, in this case

1 Runway 04, is the designation of a runway with a heading of approximately 40 degrees magnetic

[ross_M]

Darn! That was stupid of me. Makes sense now.

Just to clarify though; accurate magnetic headings such as 041 would never be used as runway names, correct?

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Correct. First two numbers of the three-figure heading are used.

[rennaps]

If they didn't round the magnetic bearing to the nearest 10 degrees they would be changing the name of the runway every year as the magnetic variation changed. This would involve quite an expense as it would involve lots of things changing (i.e. physically painting the name on the runway etc..).