"Mike" wrote in news:6D_qk.361$5C.65@trnddc02:

"Robert M. Gary" wrote in message
.
.. On Aug 19, 3:32 pm, Alexander Avtanski wrote:
Hello,

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.

If the winds are light its not unusual for ATC to allow you to land
opposite direction. They may have agreed to it only if he kept his
speed up. This may have saved him $1000 in jet fuel.

While this is true, the traffic mentioned by the OP seemed to indicate
they were busy and traffic came soon before and after which led me to
believe it was an emergency. SJC is a fairly busy airport.

In Memphis, FedEx favors landing to the north which allows their
planes a short taxi to their hub. They will sometimes land with very
high tailwinds (30-35 kts) so I'm told.



No, they can't operate with tailwinds that high. Typicla limits are 15
knots, though I have operated with a limit of 25 for take off and landing
in an airport with only one way in and out. We had special perfomrance
sheets for that.


Bertie