A friend who lives west of Heathrow has emailed me about 9 hours ago as follows:
Just had a spectacular sight.
An AA 777 came out of LHR at about 4000ft dumping fuel – was rather alarmed when I first saw it as I thought it was on fire!
As it came past us I could see the nose wheel was down but the main gear was retracted – so guessing the nose wheel is stuck. Just seen it heading back east so presumably on its way back to LHR for a landing accompanied by the airport fire service!
Will be watching the news later.
I can't find anything about it so far on any news site so I would imagine it is one of those incidents that got missed somehow (AA certainly won't be publicising it!) - presumably the nosewheel was wound down for a safe landing.
A Heathrow feed would be excellent - what a pity about the anachronistic UK law on the subject.
