Turning an entire airport around as an air traffic controller

Good day fellow pilots and air traffic controllers just a general question I wanted to know have you ever had to do a Runway change and turn the entire airport around to the opposite runways because of winds or weather, either during busy times or busy traffic or slow times or slow traffic.How did you handle it 🤔

It depends how busy the airport is. If it’s like a FNF airport and super busy it is harder to change the runways around because of the heavy inbound and outbound traffic. Just because the runways turn green to red, doesn’t mean the red runways shouldn’t be used, it just means the winds aren’t in the favor of those runways.

As we know the winds are unpredictable what happens if there is a sudden change from a headwind to a Tailwind do you just proceed with your inbound and just watch what happens on the runway or do you change the airport around

actually we did turn an entire airport during fnf at atlanta last week, how we did it was ground on gate hold for a while for the change, tower expedites all departures and approaches set all planes on hold/vector them to prepare to enter the other way around. if you want i can send you the replay:)
and one more thing, we did it because the traffic wasnt as heavy so we could do it

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I saw that runway change happen on the channels. That was neat.

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Replay replay replay I would love to see that that would be so fire right now

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haha ill send the replay later im in class right now

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Kool & the Gang thank you I would appreciate that very much

Yes I did have to switch the airport around, wind changed and it was more appropriate to change it. I didn’t have that many aircraft at the time so I quickly made the change, I think the airport was KORD, maybe I’ll check if you want more information.

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Please send me this itl be so cool

I would love to see that replay too

Last FNF at KATL, we had to do a runway change due to winds. At the beginning we were using runways 09s, 08s and 10. Later that day, we changed to runways 26s, 27s and 08 as a result of strong winds coming from the opposite side. Thanks to the IFATC team, also luckily we had approach and he successfully managed to organize the planes turned them around and had them land on their new runway assignments.

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it was me, @Henrik_E, @Chris_Hoover and @Twocflyer who did it

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ATIS information change

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i was atis so yea

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So when youseing ATIS make a broadcast anousment to check ATIS for information change and then all pilots would know to change to different runway for takeoff and landing

how i did it was announce the updated atis and told all aircraft tocheck atis when the change was ready

Too bad we don’t have ATIS on TS. It would be such a great help.

Yesterday I was opened at GCLP on TS and suddenly the METAR changed. There were 5 planes on the air doing patterns and I just broadcasted “rwy change is in progress” message and I gave pattern instructions to all pilots

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Was the wind change drastic enough for you to have to do a Runway change or did you do it because it was a new challenge to turn around the airport🤔