Wheels fall off BA plane

A British Airways flight from Amsterdam lost its front wheels during a "hard landing" at London City Airport last night. Luckily none of the 71 people onboard were seriously hurt.

• The BBC has more information and some video footage

Plane slips at Heathrow taxiway

For the last 24 hours in the UK, it's been snowing heavily and much of London is covered in a very thick blanket of snow.

Despite ample warnings about the arctic conditions about to hit Heathrow, it seems that BAA were unable to ensure planes couldn't slide onto the grass.

• Plane slips at Heathrow taxiway (BBC News)
  

A BAA spokesperson explained,

"the snow keeps falling every time that we try and clear it."

Is it really a sensible idea to increase flight numbers over London?

Well the timing couldn't have been much worse....

The same day that the government approved huge increases in flights over London, an Airbus crashed into the Hudson River near New York City. There was a lucky escape for 150 passengers and the pilot is being widely praised for his deft flying abilities.

This got me thinking.... What might have happened if this plane had taken off from Heathrow (or more specifically, the 3rd runway)? Where in the South East would the plane have come down?

Let's have a look shall we?

For starters I checked the flightpath of US Airways 1549. From this map, I measured 2 distances:

• Distance 1 - This is the total distance flown from LaGuardia Airport to the plane's eventual crash site in the Hudson River. Using some simple maths and a ruler I estimate this to be approximately 16.4 miles
• Distance 2 - This is the straight-line distance from takeoff to crash site. I estimate this to be approximately 6.5 miles

If we plot these distances on a map of the South East, originating from Heathrow, quite a wide area is covered (click image to expand)....

Using "Distance 1" from our example...

• If the plane were taking off in a Westerly direction, then the crash site could be somewhere near Farnborough, Wokingham or even High Wycombe.
• If the plane were taking off in an Easterly direction, then we'd be looking at a direct hit on an area such as Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Highbury or Bermondsey

Clearly this analysis is purely hypothetical and doesn't prove a great deal. However, when you consider this recent accident and last year's crash at Heathrow, the decision to increase flight numbers over a heavily populated area begins to look like a very reckless one.

And the consequences of a plane coming down in central London don't bear thinking about...