I read on MSNBC this morning that someone from the airport was quoted saying that the video is deceiving. He said the Russian plane had plenty of room to land and they do that procedure all the time. Also if you read the comments in the original Youtube post the cameraman says something about the legality of recording/playing ATC in Spain.
The video is absolutely deceiving (I'm not claiming it's intentional; it's a consequence of using long telephoto lenses from a distance.)
From a review of the Barcelona El Prat airport layout, and a careful look at the video, it seems clear that the Aerolineas is crossing Rwy 02 at the M4-to-M5 intersection. The distance along Rwy 02 from the threshold to the M4/M5 crossing is around 3840 feet, or almost 3/4 mile. The UTAir 767 had pitched up and established a positive rate of climb by the 0:35 point in the video, and I think it's arguable just from visual review that this is likely before they reached the threshold, so there was at least 3/4 mile horizontal separation, at the time they were already successfully climbing out.
I did a screen cap of that 0:35 shot which is the "horrifying" shot that makes it look like the 767 is pulling up right over and past the tail of the Aerolineas A340. I took some relative measurements of the length of the A340 and the wingspan of the 767, and made an assumption that the photographer must have been off airport property, and roughly in line with the west edge of the 02/20 runway. (I also corrected the apparent length of the A340 by cos(45°) since the taxiway crossing is at that angle to the runway the camera is looking down.)
When I work all the geometry for that 0:35 snapshot where the 767 has pulled up and established a climb, and assume that the A340 is at the M4/M5 crossing, my numbers come out to put the 767 about 700 feet short of the landing threshold - about 3 seconds from the threshold at 140 kts. That looks about right - just looking at the video, you can imagine them continuing to a threshold crossing about 3 or 4 seconds later, if they hadn't initiated the GA.
I don't count on the 700 feet being any kind of a precise number, but the fact that this alternate analysis came out pretty close to my earlier scenario makes me think my assumptions are likely consistent with this explanation.
I've got a cordial note in to the photographer to see if he'll confirm the location from which he took the video. (I assumed the closest off-airport location I could imagine on Google Earth. If he was actually further away, it would only make my numbers work out to be even more conservative.) I may post my calculations on a blog, if anyone wants to check my numbers. Or if anyone has an alternate analysis that contradicts mine (with reasoning more solid than an emotional appeal that "zOMG, they nearly crashed!!!"), I'd be glad to hear it.
Bottom line: I'm not arguing that everything was fine. If I'm nearly over the numbers, I should own the runway, and clearly the UTAir pilots didn't like what they saw developing. It looks like they anticipated the incursion, made the decision, executed the GA, and were already climbing when they were still at least 3/4 mile away from the intersection. Now, given the same incursion, just 20 seconds later in IMC perhaps, they might have been rolling out on the ground, right through that intersection at the wrong moment.
However, I do think the long telephoto view straight down the runway gives an incorrect impression to the 13,000,000 YouTube viewers that the 767 pulls up right over the top of the A340 and threads the needle past the A340's tail, and I think all the breathless headlines that this was a near-miss disaster just fan the flames of public anxiety that this was much closer than it really was.
