Immediate Media continues the story: Had Heathrow really bought a £253,200 supercar for high-speed runway checks? The truth however can now be exclusively revealed as a TopGear magazine stunt.
As revealed in the July issue of TopGear Magazine, it started when Heathrow invited Britain’s biggest car magazine to join the airside operations team for a day. Of course, being TopGear, there was a twist. Instead of using one of the airport’s regular pickup trucks, writer Dan Read arrived at the airport for a day’s work... in a Lamborghini Aventador.
His job? To assist the airside team in their daily duties: monitoring runways for debris, smoothing traffic flow and escorting aircraft, among other things.
“Driving around an airport is harder than you might think”, says Dan. “Because when you’re among baggage tugs and catering vans and 8,000 other airside vehicles, one of the hardest things to see is an aeroplane. Maybe that’s why I lost a jumbo jet in my blind spot…”
Despite this, Heathrow’s team were happy with the results. “We have over 26,000 drivers registered to drive airside,” says Derek Provan, Heathrow’s Airside Director. “So it’s vital that everyone knows what to do. TopGear wasn’t treated any differently, and the guys did a good job. With over 1,300 flights a day, it was actually very useful to have another pair of eyes on the ground.”
With the mission accomplished, Heathrow reverted to its usual fleet of vehicles. As for the the Lamborghini, you’ll have to read the July issue of TopGear Magazine – on sale now – to see where it ended up…
