[setmenu]

I believe I just witnessed a near miss between two airliners queuing to land
at the UK's Heathrow airport.

I was looking up and noticed what appeared to be one plane descending onto
the back of another it was dark but the wing tip lights seemed exactly the
same spacing apart on both aircraft.

The top descending aircraft then banked very very hard to the right just at
last moment and peeled off in a steep descending arc.

Whilst I am aware that this could have been an optical illusion [being a fan of
air shows] but I am also good at gauging scale by eye, both the distance,
attitude and intensity of the lights suggested they were very close.

I sincerely hope that what I saw was an illusion.
The thought of those two airliners colliding and crashing onto a heavily
populated area makes the blood run cold!



.

 

[blessingx]

That is scary. I hope it was an illusion. You may want to read this [NYTimes].

 

[JahJahBinks]

There was a close call in Los Angeles airport a couple of days ago, one plane when landed had to make a hard break before stopping only 100 feet from another plane.

 

[warubozu]

Wow that is scary, a link below to the article on the incident that JahJahBinks
had mentioned:

http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/afp/...n_061006163321

 

[blessingx]

I know it's been a year, but here is something similar...

 

[PiccoloNamek]

That picture was probably taken with a long telephoto lens... objects that are farther away appear to be closer together. For all we know, those planes could have been hundreds of feet apart.

Edit: Hmm, the link says exactly that!

 

[Duggeh]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek /img/forum/go_quote.gif That picture was probably taken with a long telephoto lens... objects that are farther away appear to be closer together. For all we know, those planes could have been hundreds of feet apart. Edit: Hmm, the link says exactly that!

If they are a few hundred feet apart then the windows on the larger plane must be substantially larger than the windows on the smaller plane.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

Here is some more information:

Quote:

A Lufthansa 747-400 and a United Airlines 757-200 were on simultaneous approaches to runways 28L and 28R at San Francisco (SFO) airport. The distance separation requirement for flying parallel and simultaneous approaches is 225 meters (738 feet.) These two aircraft are at a safe distance for their approach to the runway. Due to the Lufthansa 747 being three times larger than the 757 plane and being slightly behind, it gives us this incredible optical illusion.

 

[wes.coleman]

Wouldn't it be a near hit?

 

[AdamP88]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wes.coleman /img/forum/go_quote.gif Wouldn't it be a near hit?

Carlin fan?

 

[craiglester]

almost certainly an optical illusion.. I used to work for ATC and planes are kept a lot further apart than they look sometimes.

Sounds like one was taking off and the other landing, as the runways are parallel and can be used in a variety of ways.. heres a little about it from wikipedia:

Heathrow Approach Control (a mile north of the airport at the London Terminal Control Centre in West Drayton) then guides the aircraft to their final approach. Much skill is required by controllers to merge aircraft from the four holds into one single stream of traffic, sometimes as close as 2.5 nautical miles apart. Considerable use is made of Continuous Descent Approach techniques to minimise the environmental effects of incoming aircraft, particulary at night.[25] Once an aircraft is established on its final approach, control is handed over to Heathrow Tower.

Because aircraft generate significantly more noise on departure than when landing, there is a preference for "westerly operations" during daytime operations.[26] In this mode aircraft depart towards the west and approach from the east over London, thereby minimising the noise impact to the most densely populated areas. To further reduce noise nuisance to people beneath the approach and departure routes, the use of runways 27R and 27L is swapped at 3 pm each day, when the wind is from the west. When easterly landings are in progress there is no alternation; 09L remains the landing runway and 09R the departure runway. Sometimes landings are allowed on the nominated departure runway, to help reduce airborne delays and to position landing aircraft closer to their terminal, thus reducing taxi times.

A Little bit on Minimum separation distances on this page.. (5.1.3)

http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/aviation/e...summary?page=5


Here's a map showing the runway separation.

http://www.multimap.com/map/photo.cg...00&scale=25000


At night, without knowing what the planes are, or which runways they were using, I'd say it was almost 100% an optical Illusion. With over 400,000 planes a year and no serious accident for over 35 years, I'd say they've got the ATC there pretty well covered