A400m at Southampton.
 

A400m landing at Southampton at 12.43. One go-around. What gives?

Training sortie I expect

One was carrying out practice approaches at Bournemouth & Exeter yesterday afternoon.

Another at 12.59

Presumably this one... ;)

Curses, tried to post FR24 screenshot but the system won't accept it. Ah, well.

PS - tried to delete the post but foiled again!

Looks like he's on his way to terrorise the locals at St Mawgan Newquay Intergalactic Spaceport for a circuit or two...

ZM405 got bored with Southampton, and headed west and is now on finals to Newquay to have a few go's there as well.

Edit: posted at same time :D

You owe me a new keyboard as mine is now full of coffee :}

Sou has a slightly shorter runway than Gib at 5657ft. Even without the upcoming extension it should be able to land safely if needed, plus it has ILS

Same type, different country, used to do stop&go's @EBAW 4,954ft . Light winds and airfield too small to conveniently handle the type, they landed in one direction, did a one-eighty and departed in the other direction :)

The long awaited runway extension will have zero impact on RWY 20 landing distance which will stay at the current 1605M, or 5266 Ft in old money. IMHO nothing of concern to A400 operators.

During the recent Farnborough event (I hesitate to call it an Airshow) the Turks apparently requested to use neighbouring Blackbushe (around 1200m runway for those unfamiliar) for one of theirs. The airfield declined it apparently due to weight and also because there is no handling equipment there to get it's freight off (although I believe it was carrying a helicopter which presumably would be rolled down the ramp!)

Nothing to see, A400M doing training circuits at different air fields. Saw one at NCL today. Common sight everywhere.

Airbus publicity or something more sinister (think conspiracy!).

I was at the cricket yesterday and watched it fly overhead,…very nice thank you.

I will be watching again on the Isle of Wight on Tuesday if you want any more practice 😉

Only a military, public funded "airline" could afford to do this.
Or is the simulator U/S again?

During the Covid shutdown I often saw one doing circuits at LGW - used to fly right over my house at low level- great :)

In an airline the crews get to fly on real sorties to keep current, in the RAF a mixture of poor availability of aircraft and restricted opportunities to fly as demand for routes is suppressed to save money means that the only option is to fly multiple approaches at various airports to clock up the hours. Some of it will be new crews practicing what they’ve learnt in the sim (most of the convex is done on the ground) but a large part will be crews trying to turn their stats ‘green’.

Many years ago there was a shortfall of spares on a certain AT frame (circa £9m) which restricted the ‘offer’ to DSCOM so they made up the shortfall by chartering civ air to move the freight (circa £90m). We used to see the DC8 at the Secret Wiltshire Airbase almost daily loading up. Then in order to maintain currency crews then flew empty aircraft around rather than shifting the freight that needed to get to the Middle East. It’s no way to run an airline but seems to be the reality of running the AT fleet.

Just noticed an A400 has made a low pass over Edinburgh Castle a short while ago, is it for the Tattoo?

Edit: yes it was!

The M400 was also at Belfast City in June doing approaches to 22 and 04 which is unusual
ALso a Royal navy Merlin a few weeks ago