Planes in near miss over London
Friday September 10, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

Two planes came within half a mile of each other and at the same altitude. One was coming into land at Heathrow, the other had just taken off from London city airport.

The Air Accidents Investigation Branch has described it as a "serious incident".

The plane approaching Heathrow was a Turkish airlines Boeing 777 with 232 people on board. The aircraft that left London City was a private business jet.

It appears the pilot of the business jet misheard an instruction from air traffic control about what altitude to climb to.

Instead of climing to 3,000ft he went to 4,000ft and the air traffic controller did not hear the confirmation that this was the height which the plane was going to climb to.

There was good visibility at the time and the planes avoided each other, but if the weather had been poor and visibility bad then it may have been another story.

For more information see the full details on the BBC.

London City airport is used by a growing number of skiers and snowboarders and more routes are opening up this winter to ski destinations.

For the spirit of the mountains