Emirates Airbus at BOM
 

A station on Central Railway in Bombay (Mumbai) is right under the final approach and so you can see airliners coming in to land at 1000' or so quite regularly from either the platform or the train.

However there was one Emirates Airbus - A300 if I'm right - that was doing the same altitude, low speed, gear down and flaps extended but on a parallel path 2.5 kms away!.

This is because I was in a train two stations south of the one I mentioned above when it went (almost) overhead. The guy standing in the door in front of me watching the same was worried it was going to crash but he was maintaining level heading and stable flight so it did not look like any problem had occured.

Wonder what was the reason for this odd passage. Missed approach, perhaps? he flew east to west (train going southward) and I soon lost sight beyond a clump of trees next to the tracks.

(For those who dont know, BOM has two runways, 27 and 29.

Perhaps it was a mirage, Emirates operate the A310, A330 & A340 but no A300!

Maybe I didn't read that right then.... I can't spot the difference, I'm less than an amateur in these things :)

But Emirates did have them for sure around six years ago, I've flown from Bombay to Dubai and back in a (two?) Emirates A300-600. That was in April 2000. Have they retired these, then?

It sounds like he was flying downwind in a left hand circuit for runway 27. He wouldn't have gone much further east on that heading because of the high ground about 12 miles (?) east of the airfield. Normally circuits are flown to the north of the airfield to avoid overflying the city. More likely to have been at 1500'.

I see you've flowin in to Bombay often enough :)

The only odd part was that he had his gear down.... i wont debate the 1500' issue :)