I've got no idea if this is unusual or not, but on my way to work yesterday morning, I noticed what appeared to be an unusually thick contrail above. A quick glance at the Plane Finder app confirm my sighing as a pair of Lufthansa Cargo planes. The top example was LH439, an A340-313 registered D-AIGS which was at 38000ft, whilst the lower example was LH8171, a B777-FTB D-ALFB at 37000ft. Both were en route to Frankfurt and both were on identical headings. This is the best shot I could grab from my bus and the perspective might not do my sighting much justice. When they were overhead, they appeared to be much closer together/above each other than the photo below might appear to show:
Not having seen anything like this before, is this common practice for two airliners to be 1000ft apart, travelling at 500+kts on the same heading in this manner? Just curious...
Posts: 608
By: Peter D Evans - 27th June 2015 at 21:25
I've got no idea if this is unusual or not, but on my way to work yesterday morning, I noticed what appeared to be an unusually thick contrail above. A quick glance at the Plane Finder app confirm my sighing as a pair of Lufthansa Cargo planes. The top example was LH439, an A340-313 registered D-AIGS which was at 38000ft, whilst the lower example was LH8171, a B777-FTB D-ALFB at 37000ft. Both were en route to Frankfurt and both were on identical headings. This is the best shot I could grab from my bus and the perspective might not do my sighting much justice. When they were overhead, they appeared to be much closer together/above each other than the photo below might appear to show:
Not having seen anything like this before, is this common practice for two airliners to be 1000ft apart, travelling at 500+kts on the same heading in this manner? Just curious...
Cheers
Pete