Forum Topic

A near miss or a new landing method?

We watched with incredulity this afternoon around 3.20 as two A320 Super Jumbos appeared to be converging on the same approach over Chiswick and Brentford.We only noticed because of the sudden scream from the engines of one of the Aircraft.One was  Singapore Airlines the other BA.  We counted just 13 seconds between them passing the Steeple of St Paul's Church.So is this a new parallel approach? Or a near miss?   Never seen this before.

Raymond Havelock ● 3865d4 Comments

I assume you mean the A380 "Super Jumbo", not the much smaller A320.St Paul's Church is about half a mile north of the flight path to the northern runway, which was in use for most landings on Wednesday afternoon.  Where were you at the time?A check on FlightRadar 24 reveals that at 3.38pm SQ308 from Singapore was crossing Kew Gardens towards a landing on the northern runway, and at the same time flight BA268 from Los Angeles was over the South Circular Road at East Sheen, heading for the southern runway.  So they would have crossed your line of sight a few seconds apart, but in fact were on parallel tracks separated by nearly a mile, the distance between the two runways.

Richard Jennings ● 3865d

> So they would have crossed your line of sight a few seconds apart, but in fact were on parallel tracks separated by nearly a mile, the distance between the two runways.In addition, the SQ was leading the BA by about 30 seconds according to Heathrow's Webtrak system, though they might well have looked closer depending on the direction they were viewed from.Having said that, it's unusual to see parallel landings spaced quite so closely, they are usually about a minute apart and most of them happen between 6am and 7am when both runways are routinely in use for landings.

Dave Robertson ● 3865d

Thanks for that. That was a typo I did mean an A380.I was up on a building near the A4 at the time with some colleagues.  We all live locally so are well used to seeing aircraft and the A380 is quite deceptive in it's size. It does not look as large as a 747 in the air but dwarfs a 747 on the ground.What looked odd was the fact that they appeared to be converging to the same  point and the sudden noise is what made us look up and see two aircraft in the same window of view. That , I have never seen before, even when at school, which had a very clear view of the approach flightpath.Then they did seem to move apart but were still close  behind each other.The perspective certainly made the size of each aircraft look the same and we counted as each passed over the spire of the church.I don't think even with the really thorough explanations that they were a mile apart, I'm sure the difference in relative perspective would have been far more noticeable.However, really grateful for the informed explanations.So this means that both Runways are now used for parallel landings?Ray.

Raymond Havelock ● 3865d

> So this means that both Runways are now used for parallel landings?That's been the case for many years.  Although there is a published alternation schedule that designates one of the two runways for landings at any given time of day, ATC are allowed to use both runways together between 0600 and 0700 for simultaneous, staggered landings "to ease congestion and a build up of delays".  In practice, that's done every day except in poor visibility conditions, because there are more arrivals scheduled during that hour than a single runway can accommodate.  In certain circumstances, they are also allowed to do this at other times of the day.See http://www.heathrow.com/file_source/HeathrowNoise/Static/Arrivals11.pdf

Dave Robertson ● 3865d