Military Helicopter at Heathrow?
Discussion
There must be someone here who has an answer to this.
I landed at Heathrow today on a European short haul flight and was quite surprised to notice, whilst waiting for the valet to bring my car up to the terminal, what looked like a Merlin over on the far side of the facility, beyond Terminal 5. It was flying low and, it turned out, in a circle of the perimeter of the whole place.
I'm assuming that the current heightened security situation means that they think there's some threat to aircraft landing at LHR, but might there be another explanation? I didn't think that helicopters were routinely permitted in LHR airspace?
I landed at Heathrow today on a European short haul flight and was quite surprised to notice, whilst waiting for the valet to bring my car up to the terminal, what looked like a Merlin over on the far side of the facility, beyond Terminal 5. It was flying low and, it turned out, in a circle of the perimeter of the whole place.
I'm assuming that the current heightened security situation means that they think there's some threat to aircraft landing at LHR, but might there be another explanation? I didn't think that helicopters were routinely permitted in LHR airspace?
Doubtless one of our rotary bretherin will be along in a minute (making an awful racket, blowing deck chairs and hamsters everywhere) to say for certain, but as far as I'm aware there is a notified helicopter route (H9) that passed directly over Heathtrow. The only copy of Pooleys I can find at the moment dates from 2003, but that lists the maximum altitude for traffic in the lane being 800 feet, or about 720 feet AGL.
Edited by eharding on Tuesday 26th January 22:47
You can get a transit via the overhead through most major airports. I flew through the middle of Gatwick at 800ft recently.
Not sure about Heathrow, but this is a useful link http://www.vatsim-uk.org/regions/heathrow/index.ph...
The London helilanes are also vey useful. Again, flew down the Thames recently and had to orbit over the Houses of Parliament, Downing St and the London Eye whilst the police helicopter was looking for a body nr Vauxhall Bridge. In both cases single engine vfr.
Not sure about Heathrow, but this is a useful link http://www.vatsim-uk.org/regions/heathrow/index.ph...
The London helilanes are also vey useful. Again, flew down the Thames recently and had to orbit over the Houses of Parliament, Downing St and the London Eye whilst the police helicopter was looking for a body nr Vauxhall Bridge. In both cases single engine vfr.
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