JAL 43 10th SEPT

[SpringHeeledJack]

I watched this aircraft go by a few moments ago and on a hunch looked at it's flight path, which showed that it came over the Pole and down through Greenland/Iceland/Scotland to Heathrow. Some where over the generalised area of Fort William in the Highlands it made 2 racetrack circuits at cruising altitude before continuing it's route. Surely that wouldn't have been a time-wasting manoeuvre due to slot limitations at LHR ?? The 2 circuits seem pretty narrow in the curve to be easily achieved at cruising speed in a passenger aircraft. Any of the flight-tracking pros care to shed some light ? JAL43 HND-LHR JA738J

[B2N2]

That’s either a hold for ATC delay purposes or a hold to work out a landing related issue and the related checklists and/or a satphone call with the head office concerning the issue.

[Musket90]

Flight seemed to be very early landing just under 1 hour before it's scheduled time. Maybe ground handling wasn't available had it landed earlier, also Heathrow together with Airport Co-ordination closely monitor airline's on time performance.

[DaveReidUK]

Either they discovered a short-cut or they had a tailwind. :O

[Wee Clink]

I am no flight tracking pro, but FR24 suggests the holding over Scotland delayed the flight by approx 25 mins.
Subject to the accuracy of FR24 data, the flight arrived on stand 301 at LHR at approx 14:00 hrs UTC
Stand 301 previously seems to have been occupied by BA2610 to Naples, which didn’t push back until approx 13:45 hrs ……… so all other things being equal, if JA43 had not been delayed, it would have arrived 15 mins or so before stand 301 was available.
So are stand allocations at LHR (or maybe just T3) constrained such that another stand would not have been available for an earlier JA43 arrival, so the JAL flight was asked to hold in relatively ‘empty’ airspace, rather than have it arrive earlier and have it clogging up taxiways waiting for stand 301 to become available ?

[thetimesreader84]

I believe heathrow are asking all operators not to land more than 25 mins before STA, to ease and prevent some of the chaos we saw at the start of the year.