Near miss? Perpendicular flight paths over Laois?

An Ri rua

Hi all,

I'm NOT an aviation person so please handle with kidgloves and no smartarses.

I just took a belated picture of what I thought looked like a near miss. Perpendicular flight paths, is that normal? I've NEVER seen it in 4 decades.

Over Laois just now. I could see both planes clearly and, within normal eyesight, they were in the same sky locality and of the same size to the human eye. the Left to right stronger trail is the East West standard. The other was bizarre. Went More or less North / South. I've NEVER seen any traffic go that way apart from helicopters; at their own flight height of course.

EDIT: I've sourced this http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=57724838 and understand that this can be normal near airports. But I've NEVER seen anything so close and so perpendicular down the country in all my life. Never seen traffic heading North South in this area either.

I understand the tricks of the eye etc, I am a keen outdoors person, spend a lot of time in the mountains and have good long-range eyesight. This sort of thing may be common near airports. I'm simply saying I've never seen anything like this in rural airspace.

DOCARCH

Not unusual An Ri rua.

I'm sure some of the experts will explain further (not being the aviation expert myself!) but aircraft fly at different altitudes set by air traffic control so there is a safe vertical seperation between the aircraft. AFAIK safe vertical seperation maybe 1000ft (or even less - I stand to be correceted on that).

The aircraft were probably different (i.e. of differnt size/make) making them seem, from the ground, the same size.

North-south flight paths are not unusual. See it here in Dublin quite a lot. You could have aircraft flying from Norway to the Canaries for example.

An Ri rua

DOCARCH wrote: »

Not unusual An Ri rua.

I'm sure some of the experts will explain further (not being the aviation expert myself!) but aircraft fly at different altitudes set by air traffic control so there is a safe vertical seperation between the aircraft. AFAIK safe vertical seperation maybe 1000ft (I stand to be correceted on that).

The aircraft were probably different (i.e. of differnt sizes) making them seem, from the ground, the same size.

North-south flight paths are not unusual. See it here in Dublin quite a lot. You could have aircraft flying from Norway to the Canaries for example.

Hi, thanks, yeah I've read the other thread and I understand the limitations of eyesight. I'm simply observing that this sort of phenomenon is very unusual over the Midlands. I stand to be corrected. North-South flights over the central midlands ARE also unusual IMO. Its a pity I wasn't 5 seconds quicker and didn't catch the two aircraft but both were moving quite rapidly compared to international flights you normally see.

DOCARCH

Looking at your photo, the contrails are of different thickness (or look to be) which would indicate aircraft were flying at different altitudes (indicating differing weather conditions at the different altitudes) and/or were differnt types of aircraft.

tricky D

EI942, probably A320, at 33000ft, Belfast to Tenerife, heading ~SSW and DAL41, Boeing764, at 34000ft, Heathrow to Miraflores, Colombia, heading ~WNW. The difference is 1000ft which is standard clearance.

from: http://casper.frontier.nl/eidw/

DOCARCH

tricky D wrote: »

EI942, probably A320, at 33000ft, Belfast to Tenerife, heading ~SSW and DAL41, Boeing764, at 34000ft, Heathrow to Miraflores, Colombia, heading ~WNW. The difference is 1000ft which is standard clearance.

from: http://casper.frontier.nl/eidw/

There you go!

An Ri rua

Thank you

The EI942 craft seemed a bit smaller. And moving slightly faster to be honest.

tricky D

DAL41 399kts and EI942 436 kts

westdub

Its a common sight over Dublin when you can see the sky.... But over Europe they get it all day every day.... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056472014