No near miss! Honest!

[gary baldy]

Have you seen this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4660644.stm

The CAA deny there was a near miss and say the photograph is deceptive. Yet they also say planes should be two and half miles apart and no amount of false perspective in this photo makes them that far apart!

[WaldoMcFroog]

All you need to do is have the dimensions of each plane, and it should be a simple matter to work out whether they could be as far apart as 2.5 miles, even allowing for distortions from perspective.

Certainly instinct tells me that there's nothing of the sort between them, unless one is whole orders of magnitude larger than the other, and that doesn't seem terribly likely!

[jake-the-peg]

2.5 miles or 1,000 feet I think it is

With a telephoto lens you get a lot of compression of prespective I guess there could be 1,000 feet between them but I don't know enough about planes to identify them and their relatives sizes but the smaller one appears below the larger which certainly makes them seem close!

[chinois]

I'll call hoax on the photo_

[jno]

can't see any sign the picture's been faked; the shadows are in the right place, the two aircraft seem equally sharp/fuzzy, the two logos are equally readable. The rear one is clearly lower, but 1000ft? 300 yards? I find that hard to believe, even taking into account the deceptive flattening that telephoto lenses create.

[VINNY100_2]

This photo was taken in side the plane.its .just been released.(:)

here

[CT]

If I picked the correct planes, then there lengths are: 47m for the DHL and 73m for the JAL. The ratio between the two is smaller than the ratio of their measured lengths. There is a large degree of uncertainty is this, due to angles of flight.

[gary baldy]

It could be a hoax if 23 000 people inside Upton Park hadn't seen it!
I understand the compression you can get in telephoto lenses but these two planes should not even be in the same viewfinder never mind apparently this close.
I suppose the law of averages mean that a mid air collision over London is almost ineviatable.

[ianess]

Nice one VINNY100_2.

Optical illusion or not the genuine picture looks bloody terrifying. It's supposed to be just a matter of time before a collision happens and I find it hard to believe there was much separation between those planes.

[gerkin]

Now this is a close shave !

http://www.pbase.com/missouri_skies/image/39202366

[Dom Tuk]

go to airliners.net there are many such pictures on that site with lots of explanations.

[VINNY100_2]

The question is,should pilots be watching west ham when there flying planes...!!!(:)

[KebabMeister]

Optical illusion.

If usinig a telephoto lens and from an angle the aircraft could have a huge seperation between them. Vertical seperation is 2000ft (not 2.5 miles) so if you were taking a photo at an angle then they would appear close - imagine drawing a diagonal line and one plane is on that line and then further up the diagonal there is the next plane.

You know how small the sun is in the sky (and obviously far away), yet you often see pictures of people silhouetted against the sun? Telephoto lens....

[Ward-Minter]

Bloody women pilots!

[Gef]

Sorry but what are you all talking about. The BBC page linked to in the question doesn't have a photo on it.

[gary baldy]

You know what? you're right!
The picture has mysteriously disappeared.
I wonder why?

[jno]

they're now saying the planes were indeed 1000ft apart. The bigger plane is about half as big again as the smaller one; the fact that they appear to be much closer in size shows how far apart they really were, so it's just a trick of perspective.

[gary baldy]

Can anyone do the maths for me on this?
1000 ft apart?
these jets fly at about 300 mph dont they?
How long does it take for a jet to cover 1000ft?

I think there is a reason they are supposed to be 2 and half miles apart.

[jno]

it's 1000ft above or below gary (kebabmeister says 2000ft, but apparently the authorities in this case say they actually were 1000ft apart) - 2.5 miles horizontal distance

[gary baldy]

Ah - thanks for clarification jno. I'm satisfied now.
Good photograph though!

[Englishbird]

If anyone else can't see the pic, I think this is the same one;

http://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_aviation/read.main/2577187/

I'm fairly sure it is an illusion, but even then, 1000 feet or 300 meters doesn't sound a lot for an aircraft with a 65 meter wingspan. (I realise the distance is vertical)