Sightings

A revolting development

After a little more than two months in San Jose, I was finally getting used to the noise of low-flying jets in the neighborhood, but I was still pleased to hear a news report that the completion of a runway extension project at SJC “should also lead to a decrease in noise for residents under the landing path.”

Later when I read the airport’s press release myself, I noticed a detail that had escaped me earlier: With construction finished, the air traffic pattern would now return to its original position — just west of where it’s been for the last five months.

The upshot of this is that the planes I used to see flying low a few blocks away are now flying low right down my street. It’s a whole new world of airplane noise.

On the bright side, my visit to the SJC website turned me on to a very cool web tool. With AirportMonitor, you can watch the radar tracks of the planes going over my house (though they’re subject to a 10-minute delay). If that doesn’t fascinate you for some reason, the same system is available for Boston Logan, Newark, JFK, and others. While the origin/destination info on the planes always seems to be blank (for security reasons, one presumes), you can still see the heading, altitude, and aircraft type. It’s neat to see how airport traffic flows over the hills and around the bay, while high-altitude through traffic sails down the coast.

Thanks to this magnificent technology, I was able to figure out just how low the neighborhood planes fly. Answer: about 700 feet, which is low enough to make the bottom of a jet look very large.