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I found this forum having tried to find the answer on Google. I was on a B777 coming into Heathrow from Miami yesterday (AA56) and was expecting us to go into the usual hold. The attached picture showed we did ultimately do that but not after making a seriously tight circle. I thought at the time this was unusual in such a big plane so looked it upon flightradar (link below) and you can see just how sharp it was. Is this normal? I'm not the best flier so was pretty freaked out. I'm sure it's fairly common but I have never experienced anything like it, short or long haul.

enter image description here
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/aa56#1069b0be

Will
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    There's a number of questions on the site about Flightradar24, often involving its lack of accuracy. Consider Flightradar24 to be worth approximately what you pay for it, but do check out those other questions. – user Feb 14 '18 at 15:44
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    possibly duplicate of: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q/2269/1467 – Federico Feb 14 '18 at 15:45
  • Thanks for the reply. Completely appreciate that but I can say from having been in the plane that it was a VERY sharp circle! – Will Feb 14 '18 at 15:49
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    @Will There's no way whatsoever it was as represented there - that's a data issue. – Dan Feb 14 '18 at 16:00
  • Thanks! Yeah, I did appreciate it was exaggerated on the site. It has the plane turning completely within the lengh of a longish residential road! But just interested to know why we did such a tight circle rather than just going straight into a normal hold. As I say, it felt sufficiently weird for me to go online! – Will Feb 14 '18 at 16:06
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    360s are quite common, but they're smooth circles. FR24 likely just got two points in this circle, making it look much more dramatic. – Sanchises Feb 14 '18 at 16:07
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    A standard rate turn is 120 seconds, or three degrees of turn per second. Taking @Sanchises' comment at face value, even that would be considered tight for an airliner, but I don't have any first-hand experience on that. – user Feb 14 '18 at 16:08
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    if the question is "why the 360" then is probably a duplicate of this: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q/41006/1467 or this https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q/27789/1467 and the circle was not tight, given the data available, it was a 4km radius turn, with a bank angle of about 22°, well within the normal limits – Federico Feb 14 '18 at 16:12
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    @Sanchises the circle is south of those points, those points are a glitch – Federico Feb 14 '18 at 16:13
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    Thanks all! @Federico that circle to the South felt entirely normal but as mentioned we did another, much sharper turn before that. That is what is showing up on FR24 as well. Sure, it wasn't as tight as shown as that would be impossible but it was most certainly not the usual turn in a long haul flight. – Will Feb 14 '18 at 16:16
  • I don't understand why this is being marked as a duplicate for inaccuracies of data on Flight Radar 24? The OP is asking if it's normal for an aircraft to do tight turns and uses a screengrab from Flight Radar to illustrate what happened on the aircraft he was on. – BDLPPL Feb 15 '18 at 10:34
  • Thanks @BDLPPL - that's exactly what I was trying to find out! – Will Feb 15 '18 at 12:55
  • The Flightradar data shows that your supposed "360" happened at 8:16UTC, and there are 4 datapoints with the same timestamps. Even being generous and allowing 15 seconds between one point and the next, it would translate in a turn with 300m radius and a bank angle of nearly 80°, sorry, but that's simply not possible. – Federico Feb 15 '18 at 13:55
  • Also Flightaware does not show any additional loop: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL56/history/20180213/0010Z/KMIA/EGLL – Federico Feb 15 '18 at 13:57

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