An Iberia flight from Madrid had a close call today while landing at SJO. Apparently the plane even struck the top of the fence!

"According to The Tico Times, the pilot initially tried to land on a runway for planes coming in from the east, but changed course to land on another runway used by flights approaching from the west."

There's only 1 runway at SJO. And most of the time all planes take off and land from the same side, into the wind. Planes don't take off or land with a tail wind unless there's no other options, it's dangerous and the plane doesn't fly as well. This "article" is full of inaccurate info.

Totally right orange....there's never been "another" runway at santamaria airport, unless they are referring to the taxiway

What they meant was he turned 180 to land in the opposite direction due to the diagonal wind shear. That should be obvious to anyone that knows the airport. And to anyone else, they just assume there is a separate runway for opposite traffic. But the purpose of the article is the same.

One runway will have two different numbers, for example, at SJO you have only ONE runway but it is called runway 07 and runway 25. The two names are because runways around the world are numbered according to the heading you are on when you are about to take off so you can double check you are on the right runway. So at SJO, runway 07 (taking off toward the east) has a magnetic heading of 69 degrees. However, if the wind is blowing from the west, you'd take off toward the west on runway 25 which has a magnetic heading of 249 degrees.

The most common approach is done from the west landing on runway 07, however, if the wind switches, you will have to make the 'great circle approach' and land on runway 25...but they are the same piece of concrete.

http://www.fltplan.com/AwMainSearchToAi ... ZEFLAG=BIG

http://ww1.jeppesen.com/documents/aviat ... C/MROC.pdf

What they meant was he turned 180 to land in the opposite direction due to the diagonal wind shear. That should be obvious to anyone that knows the airport.

One runway will have two different numbers, for example, at SJO you have only ONE runway but it is called runway 07 and runway 25. The two names are because runways around the world are numbered according to the heading you are on when you are about to take off so you can double check you are on the right runway. So at SJO, runway 07 (taking off toward the east) has a magnetic heading of 69 degrees. However, if the wind is blowing from the west, you'd take off toward the west on runway 25 which has a magnetic heading of 249 degrees.

The most common approach is done from the west landing on runway 07, however, if the wind switches, you will have to make the 'great circle approach' and land on runway 25...but they are the same piece of concrete.

"Diagonal" wind shear? That's a new term for me. Did you mean crosswind? But if there's a crosswind on runway 7, there will also be a crosswind on 25, just from the opposite side. This runway change would work if there was a perpendicular runway where the angle relative to the wind would change.