Well, whichever sneaky-beaky 'asset' it was, it certainly bu$$ered LHR, and numerous airlines.

Sadly the minimal anonymity of the 'assets' has been well breached.

I hope the operational need justified the CivAir chaos it created.

Why all this talk of 'assets'? Why not aircraft? One does not take a Transport for London 'asset' to move around the Central Line. More Americanspeak or Managementbabble.

Flight GAF612 Northolt to Hamburg, departed 8.55am and looks to have cut straight across the London CTR en route. A German Air Force Bombardier BD-700 Global 5000, one of their VIP Executive Transport Wing Aircraft. It likely dropped someone off in Hamburg and then went back to it’s base in Cologne 39 minutes after touchdown.

Angela dropping off the keys for the new owners ?

Edit - I suppose the RAF did say one of “our” assets....

Possibly returning Ms Ursula von der Leyen after her talks with Boris on BREXIT? She represents a constituency near Hanover and was Minister of Defence until last year?

Ecky thump, thread-drift or what!

Isn’t it about time that a certain POTUS was mentioned in this thread? After all, some of his assets were at Northolt last month, so I am surprised that a tenuous link has not yet been suggested :)

Musta been something important for Northolt to be open at 9 am Devil
I would guess the 'sneaky beakies' don't broadcast an ADS-B signal for security reasons; be too easy whoever they're looking for to track them on FR24 if they did.

Northolt opens at 8am. And, the spylanders are able to fly well before that and well into the evening and night.

FR24 isn't the only thing you can look at ... there are others.

plus you can switch off ADSB all you want. You can still MLAT triangulate off of mode C/S as other websites do with an unredacted feed.

I assume that most routine Northolt traffic (VIP or otherwise) either fits seamlessly into the Heathrow pattern or goes round it. Only conjecture, but much more likely that a “secret asset” developed an in flight emergency and the RAF responded to a Mayday. I imagine that had a civilian “asset” required an emergency priority approach to Heathrow, similar delays to other civilian traffic would have occurred, but we would all understand why and the topic would have gone away by now. This is a common fault of the security services – to let everyone know that there is a secret which you are not sharing. Nothing arouses public curiosity more.

MLAT
 

That's not true, sadly.

Because all Mode C transmissions look/sound the same, it is not possible to MLAT using them.

Mode S carries (what ought to be) an airframe specific code, which differentiates between Mode S transponders, and is tied to a Registration/Callsign as well as showing a mission specific callsign if entered.

No, nor on arrival.

Was there a RAF Waddington asset flying around the area? 54 or 5 sqns?

Or someone needs to use different Google terms.

Could't agree more. An asset is anything of value or a resource of value that can be converted into cash. Individuals, companies, and governments own assets.

can you tell us what we should be looking at on the FR replay please?

Possibly that the BNN, LAM, OCK and BIG holds all get busy?

An a/c that routes from Farnborough to Northolt between 0909 and 0945, squawk E55P. It departs to the SW from Farnborough, does a 180 degree turn, passes to the W of LHR, turns NE towards Northolt, one orbit near Hayes, eventually routes to the north past Uxbridge and arrives into Northolt from the NE, landing to the SW.

Thankyou! I suppose it was faster than driving up the M25 at that time of the day..............