Overhead Antonovs

[pax britanica]

Apologies if this should be in 'Spotters corner' but I figured an en rioute ATC guy might have the answer.

While enjoying the lovely sunshine this morning-11 am Saturday- (ie gardening) I saw what appeared to be a 74 contrailing east to west. Nothing unusual there I live near Blackbushe and loads of high level overflights all the time but this looked al ittle odd even to the naked eye . As I had my binoculars in car boot I had a closer look and sure enough the plane appeared bigger (could be lower of course) witha very unusual number of flap track fairings -seemed only to have two engines per wing and from my angle hard to judge if high wing or not but looked boxier than a 74. All white with blude stripe .

As it passed further west-I am guessing it was souting sort of Biggin-Compton - I could hear it and agian engine noise sounded different.

Anyway to cut to the chase was it one of the big Antonovs?

I figured the only way to find out was to ask a PPrune following ATC er who may know

Never seen one before and it looked striking against a perfect sky--cheers PB

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

Lucky you - I live 3 miles north of Blackers and heard it but didn't see it.. hell of an interesting noise!

[VP8]

Wasn't one of mine!! all mine in the nest.

One of these Volga ones??

10:05E VDA938 A124 LFOK EINN E 180 10:00 10:15C fI 10:14 10 N N SRM EUN26 N
10:40E VDA4957 A124 ENZV EINN E 300 10:30 10:40E I 10:40 N N

[pax britanica]

HD-thanks _i wondered if I heard the noise correctly-certainly unusual and distinctive. There was a bit of cloud around but Iwas lucky to geta good view

VP8 forgive my ignorance on the flight plans stirps ( ?) both terminating in Shanon? makes sense from the route and if the times were GMT I guess it could have been either depending on the origin-- Itwas 1050 when it passed me and I am 25 miles sw of LHR

Thanks-it was quite a sight actually even at cruising altitude- does it cruise at normal ( FL 300-FL3500 ) for earleir generation widebodies or would it have been lower and hence looked even bigger
PB

[Evil J]

Hang aroung EGNX more than a day or two and you'll see one (or more)

[VP8]

Pax sorry

Should have edited them...obtained from CFMU website

Volga have a maintenance base in SNN, could have been going there for "M" 124 traffic very quiet at the moment :sad:

VEEPS:ok:

[HZMIS]

at EGMC-(southend), you can often see antonov 124s, from EUROPE, although the weird thing is often they appear to be descending, descending northbound where are they going to and where are they coming from. If I didn't know better I could say they were very suspicious, especially as to where they go. Not many places take them, as their huge size

[Jerricho]

I believe them Heavylife thingies are very popular with bands and stuff for moving sound stages and equipment around. We get the in here quite often.

[HZMIS]

UR82078, a anatov design bureau, used to fly from Iceland with fresh fish to Manston, as when we would visit at about 11am, it would be ofloading and by about 3pm it would fly out again taking about 2days before it got back to Manston as it rested in Iceland, for servicing, loading and fueling.