Direct to the final approach course…

[3WE]

As an outsider-looking-in, I’ve become aware of traffic patterns where landing airliners “going with the wind” join a formal downwind ~5 miles off the departure end of runways, and stay at roughly 10,000 feet while departing airliners fly under them on various “crosswind” headings. After passing the “departure lane” ATC begins descending the landing planes.

Very recently, at STL, I have observed a couple planes skip the downwind and “angle” straight to “a point” where they turn base and final.

You may not know THE answer, but do you think this is due to:

A. New, semi-formal ATC/Navigation procedures allowing more direct routings?

OR

B. STL has relatively little traffic and a new controller willing to see and give more direct routings when traffic allows?

Clarification- I’m not saying this NEVER happened in the past, but ALMOST never, and now, I’m seeing it regularly and not having to “look for it”.

Thanks in advance and I will try to post examples from a flight tracker.

[3WE]

Typical downwind, Northerly wind, plane’s approach from the north and join a long downwind, departing planes pass underneath.

IMG_0805.jpeg (2.53 MiB) Viewed 172 times

[3WE]

Recent trend at STL pictured below. In my experience, planes from the N and E almost always ROUGHLY follow the squiggly yellow line and fly a true downwind on a course of roughly 300 degrees. But the guy instead, goes directly to a place to turn final. And I saw a similar “maneuver” for the 30 runways in the past two days. Restating: Admittedly, there’s not a solid stream of inbound and outbound traffic which means maybe individual controllers are letting occasional STL arrivals skip the formal downwind.

Side story- one night, I watched my wife’s WN plane from Vegas zig zag and descend rapidly to land on 12L when planes before and after them used 30 R (it was night and winds became calm, and there was a gap in arrivals AND departures.)

IMG_0806.jpeg (1.63 MiB) Viewed 172 times

[Gabriel]

Typical downwind, Northerly wind, plane’s approach from the north and join a long downwind, departing planes pass underneath.



IMG_0805.jpeg

What a beautiful mess (or mess-looking actual order)

[3WE]

IMG_0806.jpeg

What a desolate place that loves God, guns and votes for Trump. Airplanes should fly over it…NOT_land there, regardless of the traffic pattern.

Completed.

FWIW, int the 1990s, Flyover was not_unlike DFW. There were also some turboprop “lanes” that could not_be viewed because Flight tracking was not as accessible on www.internet.com.

DFW also has some cool routes for DAL adding to the beautiful mess.

[flyboy2548m]

Yes.

[3WE]

I had hoped for a bit more:

Yes, we(ATC/FAA) recently updated some broad procedural stuff to allow more direct-to types of navigation.

No, you are probably just seeing (a) creative controller(s) skipping the fuller arrival routes/traffic patterns.