Los Angeles is live
Four parallel runways in two separate complexes, north and south, with the terminals between them.
West flow almost always: arrivals land on the two outer runways, departures roll from the two inner ones.
Which means every arrival on the north side has to cross an active departure runway to reach its gate. That single fact is the shift.
Los Angeles is not a bigger version of an airport you already know. San Diego teaches you to ration one runway. JFK teaches you to run two streams that intersect. Los Angeles teaches you something else: how to run two airfields at once, with a terminal complex sitting in the middle of them, and how to keep a queue of arrivals crossing a runway that departures are using every ninety seconds.
Two airfields with a city in the middle
The field has four parallel runways, grouped into a north complex (06L/24R and 06R/24L) and a south complex (07L/25R and 07R/25L). Between them sits the Central Terminal Area — the horseshoe — with Terminals 1 through 8 and the Tom Bradley International Terminal. Runway lengths run from roughly 8,900 ft on the north outboard to over 12,000 ft on the south inboard, which is why the long-haul heavies gravitate south.
The two complexes are far enough apart, and busy enough, that the real facility splits its aerodrome positions in half: a Local North and a Local South, a Ground North and a Ground South. They are not the same job. North is short runways, tight geometry and constant crossings. South is long runways, heavy metal and longer taxi times.
West flow, and why the wind rarely gets a vote
The Pacific sits immediately west of the field, and the sea breeze keeps Los Angeles in west flow — the 24s and 25s — the overwhelming majority of the time: arrivals descend across the basin from the east, departures climb out over the water. East flow — the 06s and 07s — turns up when the wind swings round, classically in Santa Ana conditions, and it reverses everything you had built: the arrival stream now comes off the ocean, and the gates are behind the traffic instead of in front of it.
As everywhere in the simulator, the flow comes from the live METAR, not from preference. Read the wind, pick the runways, put it in your ATIS — the ATIS guide walks through the broadcast element by element.
The crossing is the job
In west flow, arrivals use 24R and 25L — the outer runways — and departures use 24L and 25R — the inner ones. Departures therefore start on the terminal side and never cross anything. Arrivals land on the far side and must cross a live departure runway to reach a gate. On a busy afternoon that is an arrival every ninety seconds asking to cross a runway you are also using to launch.
Two habits decide whether that works:
- Cross in groups, not one at a time. Holding three arrivals short and crossing them together costs one gap in the departure sequence. Crossing them individually costs three, and each one is a separate clearance you have to remember you issued.
- The clearance is explicit and it is separate. A taxi instruction is never a crossing authorisation, and every runway crossed gets its own clearance and its own readback. The taxi and runway-crossing guide covers the mandatory readbacks and the mistakes that produce incursions.
The south complex gives you one thing the north does not: a centre taxiway between 25L and 25R. An arrival that has landed on 25L can vacate, clear the runway completely and hold on that taxiway while you deal with the departure on 25R — the aircraft is out of the way, and nothing is committed. On the north complex the aircraft is holding short of 24L with its tail still near 24R, and the decision has to be made sooner.
“Delta four eighty-two, hold short of runway two four left, traffic departing.”
Ground: two jobs that happen to share a field
The terminal horseshoe is the constraint the charts do not really show you. Aircraft entering the Central Terminal Area from the north and from the south converge on the same alleys, and the ramp fills from both ends. A taxi route that looks efficient in isolation can put a heavy nose-to-nose with a regional in a place neither can back out of.
Practically: think about which complex an aircraft belongs to before you think about its route. A departure parked on the north side belongs on 24L; sending it to 25R because the south queue looks shorter buys you a long taxi across the terminal area and two crossings you did not need.
Clearance Delivery: volume, not novelty
Delivery at Los Angeles is not harder than elsewhere in phraseology terms — it is
harder in volume. Departures leave in every direction, over the water and out
across the mountains, and the published procedures span the same three altitude forms you
already know. Your climb via SID / climb via SID except maintain /
maintain discipline is exactly what the climb-via
guide describes; Los Angeles just asks you to apply it correctly forty times in a
shift, at pace, without the strip in front of you becoming the only thing you are looking
at. The full published SID stack for the current AIRAC cycle ships with the airport.
What is included
- KLAX with all five controller positions — Clearance, Ground, Tower, Departure and Approach — on the same engine as the rest of the simulator: live METAR, spoken readbacks, occasional pilot mistakes and the graded debrief.
- Both runway complexes and both flows, west and east, with the real runway geometry, taxiway network and stands.
- The published FAA SIDs for the current cycle, with the correct clearance altitude form on each.
- KLAX joins the Pro airports. San Diego stays free, and the Daily Challenge stays at San Diego so that Free and Pro players keep competing on the same board.
How to prepare for the shift
The skill Los Angeles tests hardest is one you can build at a smaller field: runway crossings under a departure sequence. Work Ground and Tower together at San Diego or, if you have Pro, at JFK — hold arrivals short, group them, release them into a gap you actually have rather than the one you are hoping for. That is the same decision Los Angeles asks you for, forty times an hour, on two complexes at once.
Related guides: Tower 101: LUAW and takeoff clearances · Taxi instructions and runway crossings · Tower control at KSAN
Prepare for Los Angeles
San Diego and all five controller positions are free in the browser — no install, no card. Work the crossings and the departure gaps, and KLAX will feel like a bigger version of a shift you have already run.
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