A British Airways aircraft hit its tail on the runway while landing at Heathrow, in an incident caught live on camera. The jet, operating flight BA431, was touching down when its tail struck the tarmac. Rather than continue, the pilots powered back into the air and performed a go-around — a standard manoeuvre where a plane abandons a landing, circles back, and tries again. Tracking data from Flightradar24 shows the aircraft then completed a normal landing on its second approach.
The moment was captured by a Big Jet TV webcam, which films aircraft movements at Heathrow and has a following among aviation fans. The date given for the incident was Thursday 12 November, and footage shows the tail making contact before the aircraft climbed away.
British Airways confirmed the plane landed safely but said it is legally unable to comment further while assisting the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) with its inquiry. That means the precise cause — whether crew technique, gusty conditions, or a mechanical factor — won't be confirmed publicly until the AAIB publishes findings, if it chooses to.
Tail strikes sound dramatic but are a known, well-rehearsed scenario in aviation. They typically happen when a aircraft's attitude on approach or rotation is too nose-high, scraping the rear fuselage. Damage is often minor, aircraft are inspected before returning to service, and the go-around the BA crew executed is exactly what pilots train for: if anything feels off at touchdown, add power and try again rather than force a bad landing.
For travellers, the takeaway is a reassuring one. The system worked as designed — the crew detected a problem, aborted the landing, and completed a safe one minutes later. Passengers on flights into Heathrow, one of the world's busiest airports, may occasionally notice a go-around themselves: a sudden climb shortly before touchdown. It can feel unnerving, but it's a routine safety manoeuvre, not an emergency. Delays from an incident like this are usually brief, and investigations of this kind rarely affect broader schedules.
If you're flying through Heathrow and fancy some plane-spotting yourself, spots like Myrtle Avenue near the northern runway and the Big Jet TV webcams are popular with enthusiasts — and on windy days at Heathrow, the landings can be genuinely dramatic.
