Strange.. Aircraft over Maidenhead, UK

So I've just seen a weird thing. In my 37 years of living under the Heathrow flight path, I've never seen this before.

About 6.30 - 7.00pm in Maidenhead, I heard the noise of low aircraft. Went outside and saw three aircraft in tight formation. They came in from the north and turned east over our house and headed towards London/Heathrow.

Now I've seen plenty of aircraft over our house, since we are right on the flight path, but I've never seen three aircraft in formation flying so low.

It couldn't have been for an airshow, at there are none round here and it's evening already and getting dark. So I thought it might be a diplomat or something heading for Heathrow. So I go back inside and a few minutes later hear it again. It's the same three aircraft going over head. They went over at least another 6-7 times.. always in tight formation and always heading south then turning east. They were a lot lower than most of the big aircraft that are coming into Heathrow.

So I phoned up BAA at Heathrow, and they knew nothing about it. The lady put me on hold and when she came back about 10 minutes later, said Air Traffic had no idea and knew nothing about it. She said the controller checked over Maidenhead and nothing was there. But she did confirm she had had a few calls about it.

Maybe it was heading to Northolt... I dunno.. I am sure it's legitimate (they were hardly hiding themselves)... it just seemed very weird and unusual.

Anyways, got a video of it.. hopefully someone can identify them.. no insignia that I could see... looks like two learjet type aircraft... not sure about the overwing with the 4 engins.

The ATS'er in my hopes it's some sort of secret thing

Thoughts? Apologies for the shaky cam.. was trying to get a tail number




Missed the D on Maidenhead.


[edit on 17-9-2009 by SadisticRabbit]

The four engined plane looks like a BAE 146, one that prince charles uses.Notice the union flag on the tail plane.
jetphotos.net...

[edit on 17-9-2009 by remymartin]

Originally posted by remymartin
The four engined plane looks like a BAE 146, one that prince charles uses.
jetphotos.net...

Its probably wills and harry tailing behind. traffic looked a bit busy today, thought we'd take the planes

Never seen that jet before. Its kind of cool lookin...


PEACE!!!

Ok - this is WEIRD!!!!

Check out my thread here which I wrote 2 days ago.... a plane doing loops around me (near southampton!).... very unusual and low

What are they doing/prepping for?

[edit on 17/9/09 by AlwaysQuestion]

That is odd.
Do royal family members have 2 lear jets with their plane at all times now?Can't say I have ever heard of them doing it before.

Must have been someone damned important though.
Weird that they were so low-isn't that a bit low for a holding pattern?
Were they circling the airport do you think?

actually not the same plane - sorry, but the same sort of thing.... very unusual none-the-less....

Hmmm quite mysterious.

The accompanying planes look like Learjets, which begs the question why would Learjets be accompanying a wee beastie like this. If someone really important was on board - I dont imagine Learjets would be the accompanying planes. Maybe it was some kind of test flight, and the learjets were monitoring / filming.

On the second pass towards the end it looks like something is protruding from the bottom of the main plane.

Its definately an RAF BAE 146 jetphotos.net...

Your Ministers (and MPs now and again) all fly those around rather freely. If they have to pop over to Stockholm or zip down to Milan or whatever, they fly in one of those. The escorts are an unusual touch though, particularly in country.

Definitely a BAE 146 and two BAE 125's. Might all be 32 Squadron who operate all the Royal Flights.
Looks like they might have been practicing a bit of formation flying for an upcoming event somewhere.

What's weird, if it was someone important you would expect them to go straight in... not circle round 6-7 times. Plus the easterly direction they were heading to was towards Heathrow, yet Heathrow deny all knowledge of them.

If they were going to Northolt I would expect them to be further North.. we very rarely get Aircraft heading to Northolt over us because it interferes with Heathrow traffic. My house is directly below the flight path for Heathrow.

I thought being in a tight formation like that over residential properties was a no no..

All very weird.

Its an RAF BAE146 flanked either side by Two RAF BAE 125 from 32 (Royal Squadron)

My guess is that they were doing a flypast, or a photo op.

They are based at RAF Norholt, and Maidenhead is less than 15 km away as the crow flies.

Whats more suprising to me is that you've never seen them before.

reply to post by SadisticRabbit

I thought being in a tight formation like that over residential properties was a no no..

yer but Wills went to that old ladies house remember to have tea and say sorry for his Mum sending the same card 5 years runnin so they do go over residential areas

This could be the answer www.pprune.org...

"Think it was a "sunset ceremony" at Northolt.....Hurricane and Spitfire did a display a little earlier"

[edit on 17-9-2009 by remymartin]

The BAE 146 is a very cool aircraft. Looks like a mini C5 Galaxy. About ten years ago some airlines in Canada were using them for hourly shuttle flights between cities. I always thought that was kind of a humbling job for such a high performance, military looking jet.

reply to post by remymartin
Known as the "Whisper Jets" super planes to fly in and loads of room. Flybe use them from Belfast George Best airport on shorthaul.



[edit on 17-9-2009 by smurfy]