Remember the 'guy in a jetpack' seen flying close to passenger jets? Probably just balloons, says FBI Passenger jet pilots who reported what looked like a man in a jetpack flying over Los Angeles may have just been seeing runaway balloons. That's according to the FBI this week. If you can cast your mind back to August last year, you may recall the tale of American Airlines pilots claiming someone equipped with what was …
That when it comes to drone/jetpack/ufo sightings, pilots aren't the definitive authority. They can make mistakes too. All too often the comments below videos about this sort of phenomenon devolve into "but it was a pilot who reported it, he knows what a normal plane looks like, so this MUST have been a UFO!". Which is utter bunk. Pilots can be just as much idiots as any of us.
More importantly flying a plane for long hours is very tiring and dehydration and all-sorts cause serious head problems.And other staff and co-pilots also have a sense of humour and the curved glass windows are incredibly easy use to make high speed lights fly around the sky.
Also. If your unidentified object is moving slowly like, for instance, a balloon and your aircraft is clipping along at over 400mph, the length of time you get for a good look at whatever it is[1] is the square root of sod all.
Thus what you actually get is:
"WTF was that?"
"No idea. Looked a bit like a bloke wearing a jet pack."
"I'll call it in..."
[1] i.e. the time between "invisible dot" and "passed it".
"the curved glass windows are incredibly easy use to make high speed lights fly around the sky."
I remember seeing a film shot at night from a small aircraft cockpit with a cluster of lights "flying" in fixed formation with each other and the aircraft. The shot zoomed in on the lights.
Having spent a good bit of my working life looking through optical instruments I knew the sort of effects seen in an unfocussed image of a point source. The sort of unfocussed image you might see when a camera focussed on distance is imaging reflections of near-by indicator lights. I could see the camera lens had a 5-blade aperture diaphragm.
Were the crew really taken in by it or had they spotted the chance of a good spoof?
It's worth remembering that UFO simply means Unidentified Flying Object. If it flies and you haven't identified it, then it's a UFO. That doesn't automatically imply it's an alien space craft, a man with a jet pack, a spaghetti monster, a superhero or a politician going to COP26. It could just be a robin you mistook for a sparrow.
The pilot is not flying around to identify any other things in the air, the pilots' job is to avoid hitting things in the air and landing safely - so the pilot did a darn good job. Sure hitting a balloon would not have been a big issue but hitting a drone or jetpack guy would be a serious issue - the pilot didn't hit anything.
-We know this woman is a witch because she looks like one.
-We know this woman is a witch because she dresses like one.
-We know this woman is a witch because she has a wart.
-We know this woman is a witch because she turned someone into a newt.
-One burns witches.
-One burns wood.
-Witches burn because they are made out of wood.
-Bridges are made of wood.
-However, bridges are multiply realizable. They can be built from stone. [Implied] Building a bridge out of the woman will not determine that she is made of wood.
-Wood floats in water.
-A duck floats in water [bread, apples, very small rocks, cider, gravy, cherries, mud, churches, lead].
-If the woman weighs the same as a duck, then she is made of wood.
-The woman weighs the same as a duck.
-Therefore, the woman is a witch.
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