"John T" wrote in message
m...
"Mike W." wrote in message


If you hear 'runway zero', then you know you have missed something in
the transmission.

Similarly, if you're in the pattern for runway 20 and you hear somebody
announce "[your airport] traffic, N123 base, runway 2[garbled]", you can
assume you've missed something. You still haven't made a case for using
anything but the numbers painted on the runway.



Well, yes, the case is easy to make.

If everybody used the leading zero all the time, then you KNOW FOR SURE
anytime you hear less than two digits, then you have missed something.

If the leading zero is NOT used and you hear only ONE digit, then you have
no way of knowing whether you missed something, or not.

Shortening a direction-based entity in this way is unnatural and causes
confusion. Even the FAA's own NACO chart-selection web site, uses the
leading zeros in the index, and then omits them on the charts..