Hello,

On Aug 19, 5:14*pm, "Mike" wrote:
"Alexander Avtanski" wrote in message
[...]
I just came back from a walk outside my office in Santa Clara. *Around
3:00pm I saw something quite unusual - while all the planes from San
Jose International were taking off in N-W direction, there was a
single plane (something that looked a bit like MD-80) that seemed to
_land_ coming from N-W, exactly opposite the rest of the traffic.
[...]

From the description, the MD-80 was probably an emergency coming in for a
landing and was allowed to land opposite direction for expediency. *He could
have had a mechanical problem, a fuel problem, or a medical emergency. *It
happens all the time.

Thanks Mike! I was beginning to think that maybe they changed the
traffic
direction and I saw the last plane landing in the old sequence. But
after reading
your mail I remembered about the archive radar tracks for SFO Bay Area
( http://live.airportnetwork.com/sfo/ ). Looking at the data shortly
after 3pm
found the plane I saw:

http://avtanski.net/images/var/sjc_20080819_2.jpg

Here the two green planes are the ones taking from SJC in NW direction
and
turning left; the "opposite" plane is the red one - landing against
all the traffic!
Well, maybe he is British...

Regards,

- Alex