Forum: travel.stackexchange.com
Tags: <london><photography>
Title: Is it possible to take a photo of Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) from an airplane window?
Question: I see sometimes photos of the Elizabeth Tower allegedly taken from an airplane window. Here are just two of them taken from Instagram account  loves_bigben .   Do passenger airplanes really fly such low heights above the center of London that it is possible to take such photos?

Answers:
sents: text: No, airliners do not fly low enough that those can be photos.
text: On the left-hand one the distance between the top of the tower and the horizon is much less than the height of the tower, meaning that if this is a photograph, it would be taken from a height of about 500 feet.
text: The right-hand one apparently shows the top of the tower above the horizon, meaning that the vantage point would be even lower.
text: Flights landing at London City Airport's runway 09 pass quite close to the Palace of Westminster at low altitudes -- see for example AZ216 on Flightradar24 today -- but not that low.
text: That would put them lower than several of the skyscrapers in the City which they need to pass over to get to the runway.
text: The charted approaches to LCY specify staying at an altitude of 2000 feet (which is more than 6 times the height of the clock tower) until just west of the Isle of Dogs.
text: Some approaches to runways 27R/27L at Heathrow pass close to Westminster too, but at an altitude of 3000 feet.
text: More generally, the Palace of Westminster is in Restricted Area R157 where flights below 1400 feet without special advance permission are forbidden.
text: Both images look like digital artwork rather than photos to me.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/16947/hmakholm left over Monica
score: 73
sents: text: Here is a real photo taken on 21st September from a plane coming in to land at Heathrow airport.
text: Planes on final approach to Heathrow often fly down the south side of the Thames so if you have a window seat on the right of the plane you often get a very good view.
text: However, not as close as in your images at the top!
text: I doubt it is easy to get any closer.
text: Elizabeth Tower is just right of centre.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/85525/gebjon
score: 29
sents: text: As Henning's answer makes clear, the images in the question are composites and passenger planes don't fly that low over central London.
text: Also, the clouds in the second image are obviously fake: they're clearly large clouds but being below the roof-line of the Palace of Westminster means they'd have to be between ground level and about 100ft (30m) altitude.
text: However, passenger planes do fly quite low over London.
text: Typically, the wind in the UK is from the west, and planes land into the wind where possible.
text: Since Heathrow is to the west of London, this means that, in typical weather conditions, commercial flights coming into Heathrow do pass over central London at low enough altitudes to give very good views of the major landmarks.
text: It is possible to get nice photos of London from commercial flights; but not that nice.
text: Also, the weather in London is often cloudy so you may well fly over central London and see nothing.
text: If I remember, I'll edit this to give an indication of the altitude they fly over London but, as luck would have it, planes are landing from the west at Heathrow today, so they're not coming in over London.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/11491/David Richerby
score: 12
sents: text: I have in fact seen Big Ben while flying into London Heathrow once or twice, but always from far further away than these photos.
text: Far enough that I had to search a bit to find landmarks.
text: The photos are certainly manipulated for artistic effect and the originals are likely either from the London Eye (a large enclosed Ferris wheel) or from a helicopter touring the city.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/73473/Ruadhan2300
score: 8
sents: text: This is from an approach to LCY - afraid it's not Big Ben but Tower Bridge, as we were approaching from the east rather than the the west (depends on the wind direction), but this may give you an idea how low flights come in over central London.
text: For me, it's lower than I would have thought, but still not low enough to take the photos in question.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/85594/rbennett485
score: 2
sents: text: There is something wrong with the lighting in the first picture (well, several somethings): the hand is illuminated from the outside, and clearly in shadow on the part facing the inside of the plane - and the plane's interior is also not illuminated by the sun.
text: This contrasts with the window border, which is clearly illuminated by something while it should also be in shadow/airplane interior light.
text: the picture is made into the setting sun (or rising, it doesn't much matter).
text: This is perplexing on one hand because intensity of interior airplane interior lighting when I flew did not match the sun's (even at sunset), and on the other because the horizon would be much much brighter than the parts of buildings not illuminated by sun a total absence of shadows in the city scape.
text: The low sun on the horizon should project shadows, and some of them should be visible on flat-top buildings (or flatter-topped) the two example photos by contributors have cloud shadows in the city scape.
text: Residents of the UK will know better if cloud shadows are common or not.
text: EDIT:
text: The first picture (at least) is not taken from an airplane window.
answer_details: author: travel.stackexchange.com/users/66384/Calin Ceteras
score: 1

Summary of the answers:
The Palace of Westminster is in Restricted Area R157 where flights below 1400 feet without special advance permission are forbidden, so you would not be close enough to get a good photo.  The images in your examples are composites rather than from passenger planes.
Planes do not fly low enough and are not permitted to fly low enough in London to take such pictures.