[bambax]

The linked article (more interesting than this one IMHO) asks

> Why were they arriving and departing on the same runway when parallels were available?

and it's a good question! If there's more than one runway available, and bad visibility, why make two planes use the same runway so close to one another??

https://vannevar.blogspot.com/2023/02/austin-fedexdal-disast...

[jameshart]

Unless the terminal is between the runways, using parallel runways will still require clearing planes to cross runways. The conflict risks are different, but they don’t go away.

Intuitively feels like the safest way to operate would be landing planes on the farthest runway, with takeoffs on the near one, because it would only require clearing just-landed aircraft to cross the takeoff runway and you have more discretion to time departures than arrivals.

[hrunt]

At ABIA, the terminal is between the parallel runways.

[jameshart]

Fair point. Forgot that since it’s in Texas, they would have the space to spread out :)

[throwaway290]

Perhaps they had not much traffic that day and wanted to keep one runway busier to save on maintenance or something.