Following a friend’s flight to Calgary in Canada I noticed the plane landed heading South.
Appreciate modern aircraft are not required to take off or land into prevailing wind but as most airports have evolved from many years back was under the impression most were East-West.
Are there many major airports that are North-South runways?
Geoff
A lot of the ones Ive flown in and out of are N/S. Very Few E/W. Around here in the Seattle area are
Seatac, Paine Field and Boeing Field are all N/S
SFO Has N/S Primarily but also have E/W
NAS Agana Guam when I flew out of there was N/S
NAS Moffett in Ca was N/S
I could go on.
But to say all were E/W would be not correct.
Take a look at the major airports here on Flight aware (Just put their ICAO in the search bar) and look at their Maps. You will see lots of NS and EW and a lot of Majors have Both.
It mostly depends on the prevailing winds for that location.
EHAM has 3 N/S runways and 2 E/W runways. It all comes down on the prevailing winds, for EHAM that would be southwest to south mostly
Yes, guessing surrounding land contours are a factor too. Back in the day landing or taking off into prevailing winds was, to the best of my knowledge, quite important but less so nowadays.
It is odd how things evolve, nothing to do with aircraft but often wondered why race tracks tend to be anti clockwise, most athletics, horse racing dog racing tend to be anti clockwise. Think from memory even Ben Hur’s chariot race was anti clockwise 
Geoff