Kidlington airport - White plane

[illmonkey]

I was recently told that Kidlington airport is now doing commercial flights to Dublin and Edinburgh, good news!

Anyway, on a walk near by 2 planes were very low, 1 circled a few times, the other went straight in and landed. The first plane had 4 engines, I know little about planes, but surprised such a large aircraft would be landing there.

Strange thing was the second was solid white, no colour what so ever, it just looked weird.

Someone famous? Moving new plane?

[SVX]

Did the second one also land at Kidlington? As to me that looks like one of the contract aircraft that the RAF use for troop and cargo transports out of RAF Brize Norton.

[anonymous-user]

Looks like an A330, which are just coming into service with the RAF for transport/tanking.

[illmonkey]

Forgive me, it may not be Kidlington, I assumed it was, as we were fairly close.

Both would have landed at the same place though.

[Nickyboy]

Kidlington is almost under the approach for Brize, they make a turn over Oxford and follow the south side of the A40 on approach

[Brigand]

I didn't think Kidlington had a long enough runway to take those kind of A/C? Whenever I visited or drove past it only had light and leisure A/C there. Mind you, it's been a couple of years since I was last there, so it could have changed by now!

[Ginetta G15 Girl]

TORA is around 4700 ft.

[FuzzyLogic]

In terms of larger size of aircraft, Oxford has some regular Gulfstream and Global Express visitors (and indeed based aircraft). We occasionally have an Embraer Lineage (approx Airbus A320 size) come in as well. The TORA (Take Off Run Available) at Oxford is actually larger than London City to give you some comparison.

The new service being operated to Dublin etc is being operated by Minoan Air on a Fokker 50.

[jonnyb]

An aircraft would turn from base leg to final for RW26 at Brize over Kidlington. I would suggest this is what you saw. You could land one of these (A330) at Oxford, but you probably wouldn't get it out again.