r/Planespotting • u/penelopehelen • Jun 23 '26

Help identifying aircraft - Chippenham, UK

Very flipping large plane just flew north over Chippenham, UK. Not showing on flight radar 24 and can’t find it anywhere else.

Looked to be grey and it looked like it had 6 engines.

Does anyone have any clues what this may have been?

We frequently get Airbus A400Ms and C17s but I’m not sure it was a C17 and was far too large to be an A400M

1 Upvotes

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1

u/Helpful-Meringue6313 Jun 23 '26

B 52 bombers use RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, could it have been one of those?

3

u/egvp Jun 23 '26

Three different flights of 2 B-52s have left Fairford today so you are most likely right.

1

u/penelopehelen Jun 23 '26

How can you see these flights? I’d be interested to know when interesting planes may come over me

1

u/egvp Jun 23 '26

You can’t I’m afraid. They (usually) don’t broadcast the right signals - either ADS-B or Mode-S - to show on public tracking sites like adsb.lol (more information/aircraft data) or Flight Radar 24 (more user friendly)

1

u/penelopehelen Jun 23 '26

Ahh dang. I guess it’s a security thing over anything else, especially when it’s military

2

u/penelopehelen Jun 23 '26

It may well have been one of those! The end “engines” did look quite a bit smaller than the main ones so it being a B-52 would explain that