If you venture into the Pprune thread that I linked to above, you'll find that some good detective work has been done already. The photograph was taken by a professional sports photographer covering a football match, at West Ham, I believe. One of the main holding areas for Heathrow is nearby. The photographer, of course, was using a huge lens. He spotted the aircraft (the game was quite dull, by all accounts), realised that their paths would cause their silhouettes to overlap, and grabbed the photo. No doubt he or his agency then hawked it round their usual gutter press clients as fodder for the standard "flight of doom" story, despite being fully aware of the foreshortening that the lens would have caused.
The BBC story, while attempting the appearance of balance, still leaves the impression that something must have gone wrong, despite the spokespersons denials (or perhaps I'm just reading too much between the lines). Their original story was let down by the claim at the end that normal seperation is two and a half miles - that's true, but only for horizontal separation. Normal vertical separation is 1000 feet, a fact which they've now added, without removing the earlier contradictory information.
Cynical, moi?
