How Close?

[Thumper]

I was staring out of my window at the pretty vapour trail of this plane when I saw another plane coming straight towards it. By the time I got my camera it had gone past.

How close dya reckon the 2 of them were and do airliners fly that close normally?

[Mayfly]

Depends on where it is Thumps normal separation at height is up 2,000ft & the airways can be 10 miles wide. That does look as if it was close but those type of distances can look deceiving.





PS you posted 2 threads so I've deleted the other one

[Thumper]

Milton Keynes, shot from my lounge window

How on earth did it post 2 threads?

[Nickolas]

Keep checking the CAA site for close encounters of the fixed wing type.......

There were probably miles apart but as there is no other visual reference to provide scale it looks closer that it probably is.

Airprox is the term.

Extract from the document..........
Second para is the 'interesting' one

There are, nevertheless, occasions when other individuals
believe they have witnessed ‘a near miss’ and wish to report
the incident. In such circumstances it invariably proves to be
the case that aircraft on apparently conflicting tracks were
separated vertically, ie they were at different heights.
Indeed, vertical separation is fundamental to air traffic
systems worldwide. Even to the expert eye, judging the
relative height of 2 or more aircraft can be extremely difficult,
especially if the higher aircraft is larger than the other.

In the UK, at all levels and even in the worst weather
conditions, air traffic controllers can cross aircraft 1000 feet
above or below each other. In good weather, in areas where
an air traffic control service is not mandatory, pilots can
significantly reduce this 1000 feet vertical separation and still
operate with complete safety on a ‘see and avoid’ basis.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/Dap%20sheet%2010.pdf

[Mayfly]

It's a busy area around there,

This link is good [nicked from RLN in the stumbling thread] shows all sorts of info......

http://www.radarvirtuel.com/#

[Thumper]

Thanks for the links, very interesting reading

It's definately a perspective thing, I am sure they really were miles apart, but to the human eye from my perspective it looked like they were on a collision course

It is a very busy area here, theres Luton and Stanstead for airliners and Cranfield for civi's.