They're never as close as they look.. ATCOs at Heathrow Tower, when I was there about 100 years ago, were a quiet, unassuming bunch.. never given to any form of exaggeration.. So, when one popped his head through the rest room doors and announced "The next two landers are so tight they've got the same stand number", the assembled multitude moved in an orderly fashion, similar to a football crowd, to the nearest window. The sight of one turning off with the next one touching down was usually greeted with "..could have got one away in that gap", or "Checker doing an inspection then?", or "s'pose they were making room for a towing Jumbo".... and all the usual rhubarb....

Meanwhile, the Air controller, just relieved, was hurtling horizontally through the Approach Room doors bent on shaking the the Final Director warmly by the throat for making his hair go instantly grey...

Oh happy days........

I reckon quite easily from the parallel runway ;)

HD,
is that why Heathrow Approach is now 70-ish nm WSW of Heathrow Tower? :E
Keep up the great stories. :ok:

Zooker.. Dead right!! Too many strangulations plays havoc with the EG list!

Take care...

HD I remember similar situations back before Maastricht UACC existed and we were still operating next to Brussels ACC on the top floor of the terminal building there. A departure EBBR to ELLX (already refused due traffic) calls on the freq. climbing into the Upper Airspace. Planning Controller, Willy Withofs, throws headset in the air and disappears through the adjoining door only to reappear, seconds later with an ACC controller under his arm, and beating him about the head with an FP strip. He then proceeded to smash the poor bloke's head against the (full) strip bay, screaming, "That's why he was refused!!!" The victim was released to wander home and Willy said, "While i'm up, anyone want coffee?" Happy Days; but to stop a repeat the ddoor was boarded up so we had to go down a floor, run the length of the building and go upstairs again. Too much effort so we stuck to verbal abuse.


Thread drift, not a lot of people know it, but one of the crews in the Tower at Zaventem probably had the unique experience of being relieved by helicopter when the building first was openned back in the 1950s and a fire had cut them off. The stairs on the internal stairways were (still are) made of wood.

Wonderful story Lon.....

On a more serious note everyone should remember that the "separation standards" are not laid down to ensure that for example aircraft pass over each other 1000ft appart.

The separation standards both horizontal and vertical are designed to ensure that aircraft do not collide.

If the vertical standard is that aircraft without the required horizontal separation most be instructed to fly at indicated levels that are different by 1000ft then one can expect that provided they do, taking all the factors into account they will not hit each other. They may come a lot closer than 1000ft however.

The same applies to for example radar separation - if 5 miles is the standard then provided the controller uses their judgement and decides two radar returns / responses are 5nm appart then while the aircraft may be less than 5nm (radar errors etc etc), they will not be so close that they hit.

So perhaps the aircraft did seem a lot closer than xnm and a lot closer than 1000ft above or below. There is a very good posibility that it was. However, you are a perfect witness to the fact that the systemn works and the aircraft did not hit.

Therefore the objective of ATC - prevent collisions was acheived.