ATC giving incorrect takeoff runway


ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue: ATC is giving instructions to taxi to a runway which would have me take off downwind.

Real life METAR METAR: LDZA 081600Z 05011KT 360V080 9999 OVC020 05/02 Q1005 NOSIG

Flightradar shows aircraft taking off from RWY04

MSFS2024 ATIS for LDZA reports generally the same conditions, and states that 04 is the active rwy for landing and departing…

…but regardless, I’m being directed to taxi to rwy22 (no flight plans filed, or created within the flight)

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue: Any

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

Community folder empty

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)?

Frequently

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Find a windy airport
  2. Request taxi

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How is set your “ATC enforce flight plan” option ?. If you want the ATC to always pick-up the runway based on the wind, it should be set to OFF.

“ATC enforce flight plan” is no factor because I didn’t have a flight plan to begin with (neither created outside the sim, nor from within), as I mentioned in the OP.

But anyway, the option is off for me.

Thanks for confirming.
I was thinking to another point: are you selecting Live Weather since the World Map or are you starting your flight maybe with custom weather and then selecting Live Weather ?. I think I experienced that issue when starting with custom weather and switching to Live Weather once the flight started, I guess ATC can mess up wind direction in that scenario.

Possible, but I’ll have to check that tomorrow and see how it goes. I’ll report back here when I do.

Thanks for the tip!

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And another possible root cause :slight_smile: : Live weather doesn't match the real weather in the UI when selecting an airport
If weather on the World Map is different than the one when you start your flight, maybe ATC received incorrect parameters to determine the departure runway.

I tested it and couldn’t reproduce the error. The ATC gave me the same runway as stated in the ATIS. Although, the wind was only 2kts (when I encountered the issue the wind was more substantial), so maybe it wouldn’t be a factor. I don’t usually play with custom weather but I can’t be 100% certain I didn’t have custom weather preselected that time (and then changed it to RL weather).

No, I don’t really think this is related. Weather engine not getting RL weather 100% correct isn’t really something new, the issue was that in game ATIS and ATC gave contradicting information (as described in my OP) about the active rwy.

At any rate, I’ll keep an eye out, and if this happens again I’ll open another ticket.

As far as I’m concerned this one can be closed.

Thanks for the feedback @DementedCorn327!

1 Like

Thanks for your feedback and hopefully it was a temporal glitch. I moved the topic to # User Support Hub . If you see issue coming back (and if possible have a way find to reproduce), then topic can be moved back to Bug Reporting Hub or a new topic be opened.

I just had this issue today, a few different times throughout a flight (with one off-plan pitstop at an airport enroute). There’s definitely something buggy going on.

This is all with live time and weather, and with the “Enforce flight plan” option disabled. I planned a flight in the EFB and sent it to ATC, although I was flying VFR. The EFB auto-selected runways for takeoff and landing (which I did not notice until after the flight). I don’t recall any issues with takeoff, despite a 10knot wind. After flying for a short while I had to make an unplanned stop at an uncontrolled airport en-route – this is where things start to get a little strange.

The airport has two perpendicular runways, I don’t recall exactly what so I’ll refer to their headings as X and Y. I tune to the AWOS station and it reports winds from X, landing and departing from runway X. Sounds good, however as I overfly the airport I notice the windsocks are all fully extended perpendicular to heading X, and I have to adjust to land on runway Y instead. Well, that’s annoying, but the AWOS could have been old I guess.

After parking and a short stop here, I announce taxi to runway over the radio. Winds haven’t really changed, and AWOS still is reporting the wrong information. There’s no option to choose a departure runway from the comms menu, and the game announces “Taxi to Runway X for a straight out departure”. Well, X still has an 11-knot crosswind while Y is nicely situated directly into the wind, so I head to Y and take off from it.

Fast forward a bit to my planned destination, a controlled airport. ATIS reports winds from 13 and runway 10 as active, but the tower assigns me 35 – which is the runway that the EFB chose during flight planning. Well, this time the ATIS was accurate and runway 35 has a nasty crosswind on it, which I don’t realize until lining up for landing.

So, just a summary of what I experienced in the course of this flight:

  • Departure instructions (controlled airport) and ATIS were consistent and sensible
  • Enroute landing AWOS was 90deg off, more or less
  • Enroute departure runway (uncontrolled radio call) was consistent with the AWOS, which was inconsistent with the sim weather (still 90deg off)
  • At final destination, ATIS is in alignment with the sim weather. However, tower issues landing instructions for a perpendicular runway (as selected in the EFB plan)
  • Overall, it was a very odd mix of ATIS / AWOS being disconnected from the conditions in the sim, and the ATC instructions being disconnected from the ATIS / AWOS.

i stopped hearing atc altogether today, no idea what happened,
multiple a/c, volume’s ok, not muted, copilot replies fine
weird

There seems to be an issue at some airports with the ATC proposed runway.
Example now at San Diego, Live Weather ON:
KSAN, wind from 283, proposed RWY 09: incorrect

KNZY (just below KSAN), wind 285, proposed RWY 29: correct

Another test I did at KSAN, manually setting wind direction from 270:

From 0 to 10kts, proposed runway is 09:

Above 10kts, proposed runway is the 27:

So there may be a logic we are not aware of.
What weird is that at KNZY, wind was 6kts and proposed runway was correct.