V-Flyer

An alleged near miss incident from Saturday...

BBC News

How deceptive can a picture be then? [?] They look pretty close to me!

Nah. The ATC statement is correct - if there had been an AIRPROX warning on the system, they could not have denied it.

I thought London also also operated under RVSM (Reduced Vertical Seperation Minimum)? In which case, aircraft can operate in significantly closer proximity than they used to. Having said that, the differences in aircraft size add to the illusion - which also won't help that picture look anything but dodgy...

There's a thread on A.net and they found out that the DHL aircraft was in fact quite far away from the JAL plane.

Also it appears that the DHL aircraft is banking into the JAL aircraft,which lets face it,if it is trying to avoid it it would bank the other way.

To me it looks like a JAL 777 and a DHL A300,in which case there is a fair amount of seperation because DHL plane looks tiny compared to the JAL aircraft and the A300 isn't a small plane.

When I get a chance i'll take a closer look at it.


edit: just found the thread on A'Net and they agree with me ,thought it may of been a 737,but DHL only had the 732's which look nothing like that.

Originally posted by jetwet1


To me it looks like a JAL 777 and a DHL A300,in which case there is a fair amount of seperation because DHL plane looks tiny compared to the JAL aircraft and the A300 isn't a small plane.

Do you mean the opposite, because the DHL plane is under the JAL one, so wouldn't that mean the DHL plane would look larger compared to the JAL aircraft?

If there had been a serious incident with the planes on a collision course, their TCAS' would have signalled for them to take whatever action.

Cheers,
VS045

Originally posted by VS-EWR

Originally posted by jetwet1


To me it looks like a JAL 777 and a DHL A300,in which case there is a fair amount of seperation because DHL plane looks tiny compared to the JAL aircraft and the A300 isn't a small plane.

Do you mean the opposite, because the DHL plane is under the JAL one, so wouldn't that mean the DHL plane would look larger compared to the JAL aircraft?

See thats what has me wondering about the picture,the A300 isn't a small plane,but in the pic it looks about the size of a 734,now I know that pic's can trick the eye,but?

Originally posted by VS045
If there had been a serious incident with the planes on a collision course, their TCAS' would have signalled for them to take whatever action.

Cheers,
VS045

Maybe,depends on the age of the A300,when they first came into service there was no such thing as TCAS,I dont know if cargo planes HAVE to have them...anyone?

Odd that the photo is no longer on the BBC news article [:?]

Regards

Originally posted by jetwet1
See thats what has me wondering about the picture,the A300 isn't a small plane,but in the pic it looks about the size of a 734,now I know that pic's can trick the eye,but?

Hmm, I think I understand what you are saying now. Unfortunately now that the picture has been taken down it's a little harder to speculate, but maybe the aircraft were quite high at the time of the picture. Also, the 773 is a long aircraft, longer than the a300 by far (242 feet versus 144 feet), in the picture, IIRC, it only looks a little longer than it, which would still indicate some clearance between the two planes. In any case at least no incident occured in the end, but I have a feeling LHR authorities are still going to look into this to minimize aircraft proximity.

thats what I mean about the picture looking strange.

Story was also covered (with picture) in the Daily Mail today, which does say that it was "merely a trick of perpective". I assuming that the picture is similar to that used by the BBC.

Yep thats the pic

The NATS press office sorted this out once and for all.

They went and got the recordings from the radar system.

This occurred at 1503 while both aircraft were holding in the stack overhead the Lambourne VOR (which is almost on the M25/M11 junction), and therefore both aircraft were about 8-9 miles away horizonally from the photographer's position.

The aircraft were seperated vertically by 1000ft, and it was just a trick of perspective from the ground, combined with the angle that the photographer was viewing from.

If you remember, it was unusually clear on Saturday. NATS comment was "This is normal, and happens almost every day. The only difference on Saturday is that the planes were not obscured by cloud."

I think most V-Flyers can agree that flying holds on the way into Heathrow is very "normal".

Cheers,
Mike

Wow, it's interesting that they were actually horizontally seperated by 1000ft. What a bunch of hyped up nonsense.

The 1000ft was vertical seperation, Nick.

Originally posted by jetwet1

Originally posted by VS045
If there had been a serious incident with the planes on a collision course, their TCAS' would have signalled for them to take whatever action.

Cheers,
VS045

Maybe,depends on the age of the A300,when they first came into service there was no such thing as TCAS,I dont know if cargo planes HAVE to have them...anyone?

Yes Cargo planes do have TCAS- remember the only recent mid air collision was between a DHL 757 and a Russian tupelov charter flight. They crashed over German/Swiss border. The reason for the crash was simply they didnt listen to TCAS. TCAS told the DHL to pull down- so decend- and the Tupelov said pull up- but atc told the Tupelov to decend. Russian crew didnt know if to follow TCAS or ATC- so followed ATC and they both hit. THe controller at the time was maning two stations- and was on the other station so didnt realise that they were on course to hit.

As a result all the pax, mainly russian school children, died. Subsequently one of the parents has murdered the ATC Controller and is serving life in a german prison.

Originally posted by preiffer
The 1000ft was vertical seperation, Nick.

Oops, thanks. [B)]

Oh, and does the 8-9 miles represent the seperation between the two aircraft or the distance of the photographer from the aircraft?

Originally posted by willd
Subsequently one of the parents has murdered the ATC Controller and is serving life in a german prison.

What pleasant people. Eye for an eye. Since when did two wrongs ever make a right?

Mike

Originally posted by willd

Yes Cargo planes do have TCAS- remember the only recent mid air collision was between a DHL 757 and a Russian tupelov charter flight. They crashed over German/Swiss border. The reason for the crash was simply they didnt listen to TCAS. TCAS told the DHL to pull down- so decend- and the Tupelov said pull up- but atc told the Tupelov to decend. Russian crew didnt know if to follow TCAS or ATC- so followed ATC and they both hit.

Stragnely, this incident is the subject of "Air Crash Investigations" currently (started 22:00) showing on National Geographic Channel in the UK.