Originally Posted by
SATCOS WHIPPING BOY
Exactly. It's not how many are on board that matters, it is how many below that can harmed that counts.
Even a single seat Cessna into a football stadium would be catastophic. As an example (not withstanding timing) weren't Chelsea at home that day? A potential audience circa 40,000 people in a relatively confined area just a few miles east of LHR.
Did this aircraft actually fly over LHR at 7000' whence it made the sharp turn onto north? Somebody either instructed it to go that way or it did so of its own accord. Does anyone know which it was?
The sonic boom from the Typhoons was heard over Northamptonshire and parts of Oxfordshire, but neither we (near Benson) nor my daughter's family (near Abingdon) heard it. The Dash 8 began its descent from FL250 around Kidlington. It then routed in continual descent to Reading, passing overhead there at FL150, then turned east still descending, and turned north at Heathrow levelling at FL70 in the turn. The aircraft then routed north towards Luton before turning east towards Stansted, all at FL70. All these data come from the replay function on ADSB Exchange.
I assume therefore that the intercept took place north of Oxford, perhaps around Banbury, and the Dash 8 was "guided" around London (broadly following the M25 clockwise) in order to avoid flying over the city center.