"You could see the pilot": Terror as passenger jet flies so low over neighbourhood residents thought it was crashing"
Furious residents have hit out after a passenger jet flew so low over their neighbourhood they thought the plane was about to crash.
The aircraft flew as low as 2,000ft over north Bristol as manufacturer Airbus carried out an internal noise test on its new A321LR Neo model.
Residents told of panic and said it was "stupid" for the France-based firm not to warn locals ahead of time, the Bristol Post reports.
One resident said: "It was so low you could see the pilot."
The £95million aircraft completed a low flyover above Filton, Patchway and Almondsbury on Thursday afternoon while en route to Cardiff after taking off from Airbus' headquarters in Toulouse.
The A321LR Neo will not complete any commercial flights until the end of 2018.Residents who witnessed the plane in the skies over Bristol described the aircraft as “amazing”, though some said they were concerned seeing it fly so low.
Adrian Lewis “How stupid without pre-warning people,” one resident wrote on social media. “Was so low to my mum’s house, she was home alone and panicked.
“I was also at home with my children, it sounded and looked like it was going to crash!”
Another resident, posting on Facebook, said: “It was so low you could see the pilot. Was great having an aircraft passover.”
In response to reports that some residents were “panicked”, an Airbus spokesperson said the pilot flew over Filton as low as regulations would allow - which is approximately 2,000ft.
The spokesperson said: “[Thursday’s] flyover was part of our testing of the A321LR Neo aircraft.
“It was in relation to internal noise measuring. The flight path was from Toulouse to Cardiff, and then along to Maidenhead before returning to Toulouse.
“There are really strict rules about how low pilots can fly but they can go to a certain height to do manoeuvres, like simulating the start of a landing and operating the landing gear.
“[Thursday's] aircraft will not have gone any lower than 2,000 feet - that’s the limit.”
The A321LR is currently undergoing a nearly 100 hour test-flight programme, which included the Filton flyover.
The Airbus spokesperson said it was not always possible to pre-warn residents because of the last-minute nature of test flights.
They added: “We don’t always get a lot of notice. The test flights are led in Toulouse and we were only made aware of this particular flight a few days before.
“It was meant to take place last week but it was cancelled because of the weather.
“From an external communications perspective, we did tweet about this flight but they can sometimes be cancelled at the last minute.”
Airbus' UK Twitter account tweeted about four hours before the flyover, writing: "Looking forward to the low-and-slow flypast by the #Airbus A321LR Neo over the Filton site at around 2.30pm today as part of the aircraft’s test programme."