The show might be on hold at the O2 Arena, but at Heathrow… a star is born.
Jerry Dyer, of Big Jet TV, had over 200,000 viewers glued to his livestream of planes landing at Britain’s busiest airport.
Filmed from the roof of a Ford Transit van, parked in a paddock at the Eastern End of Heathrow’s runway, Big Jet TV achieved peak viewing figures of 229,529, as fans watched a Qatar Airbus A380 go around and land.
The jet was described by Dyer as “The big daddy from Qatar”
Dyer exclaimed: “Look at the exhaust plumes out of the back of the engines, the pilots will be manipulating the throttles, keeping the speed up!”
“We have had as many go rounds and diversions as we have had landings, if you have a go around scenario, you need to decide early!”
Dyer took the sudden media interest in his stride, conducting interviews live on his stream, while swinging his camera rig to capture the crab and yaw of planes landing the unsettled conditions.
At one point, after another ‘go around’ he broke off from his commentary by shouting: “You’re going to have to climb over the fence mate!” to a waiting Channel 4 cameraman.
The popularity the of livestream caught Gilly Prestwood, Big Jet TV’s director of operations, by surprise.
Big Jet TV’s YouTube chat became so overrun by trolls, and she had to set it as ‘members only’, resulting in a raft of new signs ups and subscriptions.
Dyer paid tribute to the crews landing in such conditions, saying that being in the plane must “feel like you’re in a washing machine”.
He added: “There must be a lot of very happy passengers.
“You have got to think of all those folks who are in the aircraft.”
Dyer. who normally shares the paddock with a herd of horses, was bemused as Prestwood told him about his new famous fans Caitlin Moran and Greg James.
Dyer said: “Greg James is tweeting about me, I don’t know who Greg James is, I’m sure he is a very famous individual!”
Dyer told fans he was exhausted by multitasking between interviews:
“I feel like I’ve done 3 hours in the gym.”
In an interview in 2020, Dyer told The Star that he stumbled into the business by chance after filming a Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson landing his plane, Ed Force One.
