Oh don't be silly, now. Windsor High St takes you in totally the wrong direction!
Yes, I don't doubt for a minute that it would be easy for most casual observers to judge that wrong. Must get annoying to deal with such complaints all the time. What about plastering West London and Berkshire with stickers: "The sky is farther away than it appears."
However, at the point where I saw the plane, the closest runway is 20km away.
Actually, most of the things we're debating here (while interesting and edumakashunul for me) are pretty well inconsequential. I'm really just trying to find out if anybody KNOWS anything about this, rather than seeking supposition from anybody (including myself) about what might have happened. Anybody who truly believes that an event I think appears to have happened could pass without any official statement does not know this part of the world.
I appreciate that if it was a non event, there will be little or anything to KNOW about it. However, the few experienced aviation people with whom I have discussed the witness accounts I have so far collected have come to the same conclusions:
1. the jet was too low
2. the jet was outside the normal traffic patterns
I was thinking further about it last night. I think (and I readily admit to being a total ignoramus on this point) that the jet was lit up like it was on final approach. Which brings me back to the point about identifying the airline concerned: the plane was very low and it was very well lit.
So, here's a question for any airline pilots out there: is there a standard point during approach at which you normally turn on all external lights?