Saturday night, footage was posted of an eye popping United Airlines arrival into Newark, filmed from a car’s dashcam. The plane looks to me like a Boeing 777 on short final. Its landing gear is down and it’s descending onto runway 29. The car appears to be near the Newark Airport / I-78 – US 1&9 interchange.
Watch this – the plane is off to the right and really comes into focus about 14 seconds in:
A United Airlines Boeing 777 performing a low approach over a New Jersey highway while landing on Runway 29 at Newark Liberty International Airport. pic.twitter.com/3pc4AK6Bl2
— Aviation (@xAviation) April 11, 2026
While this was posted over the weekend, the dashcam video appears to have a timestamp of 05/18/2025 01:49:04 PM.
Runway 29 is Newark’s short crosswind runway. It’s just 6,726 feet with 6,502 feet landing distance available. There’s both a BRIDGE VISUAL RWY 29 and STADIUM VISUAL RWY 29 approach procedures with no ILS.
Runway 29 is isn’t heavily used, outside of high westerly wind arrivals. There are highway and power lines on final approach.
But back when this appears to have been filmed, Newark was in the middle of a closure of Runway 4L/22R (which ran April 15 – June 15, 2025). Newark arrivals and departures were being slowed by runway the construction, plus the shift of air traffic control work from New York TRACON on Long Island over to Philadelphia. With the FAA ordering traffic reduced traffic just two days prior, the runway 29 approach makes much more sense.
In fact, there was quite a bit of chatter around low flying over the Turnpike / I‑78 bridge.
I’m guessing that the plane was around 70–80 feet above runway elevation in this video, possibly 50–70 feet above the road. But that’s an estimate. The United 777 was following procedure, but it’s not a landing you see that often.
The landing is somewhat reminiscent of Princess Juliana International Airport in Sint Maarten. Here’s a woman blown over by a JetBlue plane there while planespotting.
(HT: Enilria)
It was certainly not arriving from the land down under!
UNITED RISING
Beautiful. 29 is epic when it’s a wide-body. Even if this was from last May, it’s still pretty freakin’ cool.
The bridge immediately preceding this stretch of the highway gets a lot of low overflies.
Runway Length: Generally 9,000–12,000 ft (2,700–3,600 m), with 7,150 ft (2,180 m) as a minimum for some models. (777 Min Landing req)
That United video is pretty old. It’s been circulating on Instagram for some time. Cool video nonetheless!
That lady screaming really helped the situation.
@Common Sense — Yes! The Newark Bay Bridge (also known as the Casciano bridge… if you know a guy. Ey, marone!) Wait, you’re in the tri-state area? Woah. Didn’t expect that.
As runway 29 is adjacent to the highway and crossing the threshold at 50’ puts you right where you should be, I don’t see the issue. Additionally, as. 29 is shorter than 22/4 L & R, coming in a little lower gets you in the first part of the touchdown zone while allowing one to get the beast stopped on the pavement.
@Pilot93434 — How tight is this compared to when DL flew 764 at LGA?
Speaking of airports that should have more space/runways… what’s up with SAN? Sure, they’re rebuilding Terminal
1, but, like, there’s no room for another runway. They’d need to build a whole new airport elsewhere, like, take over Miramar (do the Marines really need it?) and build high-speed rail to connect to the city. (Oh, wait, sorry, can’t do HSR, it’s Cali, sowie. Ugh.)
The fisheye lens in the camera distorts a lot and makes accurate height appraisals difficult but it was likely more than 100ft above the road. This isn’t really any different from flights landing on the 1s at SFO which is very rare but quite extraordinary to behold…
That’s awesome. A bit creepy if you’re the one driving perhaps, but awesome.
As we say in NJ fuhgettaboutit. Nothing to see here. You don’t always we the wide bodies on 29 but I’ve been on 757 more than a few times coming into EWR. It’s also fun to see the cars on the turnpike just below you.
Coming in west to east is also crazy as you cross the north ends of 8R and 8L.
But as others note, nothing worse than approach into LGA over the highway there. Although no 777 for sure.
Last year I came in on 29 on a 757- probably connecting from ORD- and the pilot did the smoothest go around you ever saw so few realized we didn’t land before another “lap.” I saw the pilot while deplaning and told him it was impressive and he said something like “the intersection wasn’t as clear as I wanted it to be.” Given recent events I have to hand it to him.