[Wissa]

Is it that you think we've never seen those live, as opposed to on video or (worse) in still shots?

What I think is that you've been fooled by a selectively edited video. High magnification of the top end of the contrail in the video tricks your mind into thinking you're seeing something towering overhead. The screenshots made from the video lead me to believe the top of the contrail was never more than a couple of degrees above the horizon at any time during the recording.

[Finny]

That could be -- the location of the contrail is not what strikes me one way or the other. It's the QUALITY of the contrail, how the photographer described the event from start to finish, and a few of the still shots as well. What they show is something that an airplane condensation trail would not create. I know it because I have watched -- LIVE -- plenty of missile shots as well as about five times as many airplanes in the sky leaving a variety of contrails.

An honest question that has crossed my mind: Do you think the cameraman, who has been shooting video of LA skies for 11 years, deliberately did video tricks and THEN LIED in a TV interview about what he saw? At the end of one interview he describes exactly what I've seen at the end of a missile shot -- the thing disappears. With a contrail, it doesn't disapper, it just changes. Do you figure the cameraman outright lied? Maybe he did, you know. Even so, the footage doesn't look in any way like a condensation trail from an airliner, especially as captured in some still shots I saw somewhere in all these discussions.

[TigersEye]

The screenshots made from the video lead me to believe the top of the contrail was never more than a couple of degrees above the horizon at any time during the recording.

How far from the coast would you estimate that would put an airplane? Roughly.