Planes forced to abort landing at Heathrow Airport.
A YouTube outlet that livestreams aircraft has become one of the unexpected hits of Storm Eunice, as hundreds of thousands of viewers tuned in to watch pilots struggle at London’s Heathrow to get their planes on the ground.
Big Jet TV has built up a steady audience over the years by livestreaming aircraft movements but its biggest audiences come during storms.
Throughout the day, dozens of aircraft were filmed taking off and landing under treacherous conditions, forcing a few to abort their landings.
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A fifth freedom TAP Air Portugal flight, arriving from Athens, had almost made contact with the runway when it was forced to take off again and circle around before trying again.
Not long after, a British Airways flight from the Bahamas also took two attempts at landing before safely touching down on the runway.
As one wobbling Air Algérie flight approached the Heathrow runway on Friday morning, Big Jet TV’s founder and host, Jerry Dyer, shouted over the wind and made predictions about whether the aircraft would have to abandon its approach and make a “go-around”.
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“I think this guy’s gonna struggle. He’s all over the place. Here we go, here we go. Easy, easy. He’s down!” he cried.
Social media users praised Dyer’s content as well as the commentary, saying the livestream was distracting them from their work.
One user wrote, “My Twitter feed today has gone from people insisting working from home is more productive to people obsessing about Big Jet TV”
Another added, “I Love that the whole of my Twitter timeline is falling in love with the Big Jet TV guy”.
At least 65 flights at Heathrow – both departures and arrivals – were cancelled and a further 114 were delayed by more than 15 minutes, according to aviation data provider FlightStats.
British Airways is among the airlines to have cancelled dozens of flights.
“Due to the extreme weather conditions across the UK and resulting restrictions on the number of aircraft that can take-off and land each hour, we, like other airlines, are experiencing significant disruption,” a BA statement reads.
