Runway 12-30 at Oakland International Airport is a massive beast, a full 1.5 miles in length, long enough to accept any currently-flying commercial aircraft, most military aircraft, and even a few aircraft that no longer fly, such as the well-known SST, aka the Concorde.
Of course, back then, it was known as Runway 11-29, because the Earth's magnetic field was different then!
Anyway, this runway is in use 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even if nowadays it's been primarily servicing delivery flights such as UPS and FedEx. This can create challenges when work needs to be done on the runway, for example a few years ago when it was re-surfaced, there was a complicated arrangement where the adjacent taxiway was used as the main runway at times.
This spring, something similar is going on, although the details are a bit different.
This time, the issue is the plants around the runway. I suspect these plants are Spartina, which is a very tough and successful invasive plant that loves the coastal salt marshes of the California coast.
The plants are apparently so thick right now that they were becoming a hazard on the runway, so they have been closing Runway 12-30 from 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM on Mondays every week for the past few months, and using the North Field runway instead.
The North Field runway is much smaller than Runway 12-30, but it's still plenty big enough for the Boing 737s that are the typical commercial traffic through the Oakland Airport.
But one thing about the North Field runway is that it's about 1 mile inland from Runway 12-30.
Which considerably alters the flight path when the planes take off.
So, on Mondays, the airplanes during the day take off RIGHT OVER MY HOUSE AND IT SOUNDS LIKE THEY'RE ABOUT TO LAND IN MY DRIVEWAY.
That is all.
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