I find it hard to determine the direction of the traffic pattern in UK airports. Information available for US airports seems much more thorough in comparison so I am specifically talking about the UK.
I am aware that ATC should indicate the pattern direction along with your clearance, and I am sometimes able to find this information by googling airport information but is there a reliable place to look?
I have spent a bit of time hunting around and could do with some guidance on this,
Thanks.
The AIP of the respective country will have all relevant information for every public and civilian airport; for the UK, the AIP is freely accessible online: NATS UK | AIP
Thanks for that. I have read through about half a dozen and they do mostly seem to report it, but in different places and in different formats for each airport. At least I know now that if I dig hard enough I should eventually find it there.
For airports that have ATC/AFIS/Radio operator, just do what they say. For those who don’t, and are not in the AIP (tons of GA airports are not) you can try to find the webpage of the airport which will generally have a pilot brief available. If you want to have a single-source way of finding circuit info and join/leave procedures, you’ll have to pay about £100/y for a subscription to AFE or Pooley’s airfield plates (I wouldn’t for flightsim, but for those who happen to fly GA here it’s a nice tool to have for FS). A lot more privatisation this side of the Atlantic.
Flight radar might also help if it’s a good weather day, though obviously you’ll only see it for whatever runway they’re on in that moment.
A standard traffic pattern is flown with left-hand turns, at 1 000ft above aerodrome level (AAL), so lacking any other information, you can do that until you can find some, or someone tells you differently.
If an aerodrome has parallel runways, nnL will usually have left circuits, while nnR will have right circuits. For intersecting and/or crossing runways that are or may be used simultaneously, there may be special procedures in places to deconflict traffic from one runway with the next.
As mentioned before, all the information should be available in the AIP, but sometimes, you can also look up the airport on your favourite search engine to check if it (or a local flight club) has its own website with even more and / or better-presented information, such as aerodrome field manuals and SOP.