Rare sightings of aircraft

Peter Mugridge said:

Now this is a rare one indeed - a Libyan Government A340 ( 5A-ONE ) currently on approach to Heathrow from Berlin, so an interesting routing as well.

I suspect quite a few of you have seen some of the more unusual ones like this recently ( we had a discussion about Air Force One and the attendant aircraft on the now closed thread at the time of the G7 summit ).

Seems as good as any to start such a thread with?

For those with screen readers etc: the image below is a screenshot of Flight Radar 24 showing the track of the said aircraft at 12.07 today 24th June..


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Darandio said:

And the Antonov will be live shortly on this live cam all being well.

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Peter Mugridge said:

Do we know when the 225 goes out again, and to where?

It came very close to me in Epsom ( it overflew Croydon at 20,000ft ) but typically I had 100% cloud cover...

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Darandio said:

It's about to go shortly Peter to Kyiv, hopefully you get to read this in time!

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BananaRepublic said:

Shock horror!
Of all the places in the UK, it had only just passed a mile behind my house 20 minutes ago and I didn't hear or see it.
Doh !

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thejuggler said:

At the moment, despite being under the east west airway, I hear very few flights, so any noisy aircraft are noticed.

Earlier I heard a very noisy aircraft and it was G-OSRA, one of the very few 727s still flying. It now operates as an oil spill response aircraft out of Doncaster and has just done a flight up to Prestwick. Despite it being at about 20,000 feet it was a demonstration of how quiet modern aircraft are as this sounded like it had just taken off!

Its about 45 years since I was in a 727, the rear steps between the engines were brilliant.

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Sm5 said:

Actually I got ejected, not enough hotels, so I ended up in Tacoma., right by the famous bridge. Then by friday I was offered to take a rental car to California (as its all they had and it needed returning ). I had drive to look at Boeing field whilst having no where to go.

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So I did a straight drive south, 1 stop for fuel, 12 hours.. great views of Mount Shasta and passed the 45th paralell on the way,
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stopped in Sacramento. Saw the wild west town, railway museum and next day continued to San Francisco…dropped the car at SFO, and jumped a flight to Minneapolis.

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That was the strangest flight i’d ever done… checked in 3 hours early, the terminal on a sunday afternoon might as well been midnight.. totally deserted. The desk said if I wanted I could get the flight 1 earlier… an NWA 747.. domestic flight, the last time I did a 747 domestic in the US… boarded, about 30 of us on this flight.

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Before locking the doors the pilot came with a manifest, Identified 3 indian guys travelling together. He apologised but said they could not sit together under the circumstances, split them up to window seats with 2 people occupying middle and aisle.

Seattle was a 5 day flight delay, I was supposed to be flying to Budapest, hence Kosice, Slovakia, I didnt make it there until the following April.

Two months later I was at ground zero in New York trying to identify my ex’s luggage, she was staying at the Marriott WTC, she did survive as she’d gone to work. We didnt identify anything, but did recieve a plaque each made from WTC metal, which I still have one.

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