Watertown Regional Airport

Airport Information

and More!

When you look into the sky; do you wonder to yourself why planes often fly over the same area (i.e. your house), How they know where they are going or what they are doing? If you do, you are not alone. All airports have a "Traffic Pattern" that aircraft follow when they are operating in the vacinity of an airport. They vary from airport to airport and by the size of aircraft using the pattern. Shown above, is the Traffic Pattern for the Watertown Regional Airport. Red lines indicate traffic for Runway 17/35 and blue lines indicaete traffic for Runway 12/30.

In general all entry and exit points for a pattern should be near, but clearly seperated from each other to minimize the possibility of an accident. For Watertown, Points A are used for travel in an eastern direction, B for South, C for West, and D for North. Depending on wind; not all Entry and Exit points are used at one time, under typical operation only one of the four are in operation at any given time.

Two sizes of pattern are shown for each runway. The smaller shape is for approach category A aircraft like the Saab 340, or other medium sized Turbo Prop or jets. The larger pattern is for larger jet aircraft based on the Boeing 737-800 (the biggest aircraft that can land providing scheduled passenger service).

It should be noted that smaller private airplanes like the Cessna 172,182,402, etc may use a smaller traffic pattern than is shown on this diagram; however, exit and entry points will be the same.

This diagram is not a hard and fast rule, and some degree of variation can be expected in actual operation due to wind direction, pilots operating needs or condition, and other lesser known factors.