Cessna circling over south London

I've been getting increasingly annoyed over the last few months by a twin-engine light aircraft that spends hours on end circling over south London. Normally there might be quite a bit of time each day when our garden isn't affected by aircraft noise, despite being under regular approaches to Heathrow and from City. But now, on sunny spring afternoons, this plane is buzzing overhead incessantly (I tried to type that in-cessna-tly but it autocorrected) and it really winds me up.

I spent a while watching it this weekend, and also did some googling which indicates it's a Cessna F406 that attracted some media attention last year when it appeared on some plane-tracking app circling over south London. At the time, the Met declined to say whether it was anything to do with them. But nobody seems to be discussing it this year.

I took a couple of nice photos of it appearing to have a near-miss with a Kuwait Airways jet. If the security services don't get to me this afternoon, I'll post them here tonight.

Edit: I think it might be a Britten-Norman Islander rather than a Cessna - when my son showed me a picture of a Cessna on his phone, I did think it wasn't quite like the dull grey thing I'd been watching.

point a laser pen at it

disclaimer: don't

I have also noticed this, in Dulwich. Though it was too small and too low to be London City traffic....

The reports from last Summer suggest it was flying at 10,000 feet. It was certainly well above the incoming airliners bound for Heathrow when I was watching it yesterday.

Might be wrong, but used to see these alot when central. I think they Police Spotter planes. Cheaper than a helicopter to keep in the air. Longer flight times etc.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8857517/Met-Police-spends-millions-of-pounds-on-secret-aircraft.html

Cop spy planes.

Sinister.

I've noticed these over various parts of London before, sometimes very low, circling incessantly.
Most recently was last week near Oval. I've always assumed they were just filming or something.

If it's a F406, then it's probably the Met Police (I say probably, because they refuse to talk about them) from Farnborough, or possibly an OS topographic survey flight. If it's a grey B-N Islander, like you say, then Google will provide a slew of results about who it is and what they are doing.

Here's the chap

4 Attachments

Definitely an Islander. And it's well, well above the Kuwaiti.

And it has a camera underneath

Nice pics...

Not necessarily a camera - might be fancy electronics for reading your sex texts and Candy Crush scores. fashions jaunty tin foil hat for phone

Indeed. I'd read something that suggested it was picking up mobile and wifi signals for analysis for voice pattern matches with data collected in conflict zones.

*installs voice scrambler app*

Clearly a ball turret for a small dog. #trufax

This thing plays havoc with my tv signal when it flies over, grr

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/11618620/Russian-spy-plane-in-British-skies.html

russians ?

It's my pizza delivery

http://www.freebrits.co.uk/spy_in_the_sky.html

Is the camera an infra-red wossname for cannabis farms?

FBI up to these shenanigans as well

http://www.startribune.com/fbi-behind-mysterious-surveillance-aircraft-over-us-cities/305793361/

Great article here about the same thing in the U.S.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/06/how-i-tracked-fbi-aerial-surveillance/

Spooky goings on roughly midnight to 1.30am last night, flying over Hackney again and again and again...

Not sure if it was the Islander or the F406. The engine noise was quite distinctive, quite low but with a slightly odd periphery to the noise that almost sounded a bit TIE-fighter-esque sometimes. A spotter could identify based on that I reckon.

Timing seems to not be unprecedented:
https://twitter.com/F1_funnies/status/632364112094359553

Not sure if this is what's happening here, but this is a fascinating podcast about plane-based surveillance its potential applications:

http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/