If this is the bottle.
Posted on 12/02/2005 1:28:17 PM PST by Babu
FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines plane taking off from Los Angeles International Airport.
Sources tell ABC News the pilot of American Airlines Flight 621, en route to Chicago, radioed air traffic controllers after takeoff from LAX. He told them a missile had been fired at the aircraft and missed.
The plane was over water when the pilot said he saw a smoke trail pass by the cockpit.
FBI agents believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket, but say they may never know if that's what it actually was.
The FBI is folking lying....
bump
You flew along the shore in front of LAX westbound departure?
By "professional pyrotechnics" I assume you mean hollywood stunt stuff, not military. And that would be the same stuff as the amateur rockets. Not the Estes stuff, but the real Amateur rockets, and they can reach much more than a mile, and burn times *might* be long enough to still be burning at 1 mile.
But for a fact, no one with any brains would be launching model rockets in the place unless they were deliberatly trying to screw with airliners.
The north side has a waterway and marina, and the south side has an oil refinery. Neither place where someone could set up a model rocket launcher without being seen. The beach has plenty of people, and the old housing complex at the edge of the beach is viewable from the road.
I suppose someone could have done this from a boat, but there's almost no time where there are not other boats in the vicinity and the launch would have certianly been seen, and heard, from another boat, or from people on the beach.
Aircraft pass over that place every couple of minutes, or even more often. So no one can make an innocent mistake about where they're launching.
My guess is that at best this was some kind of stunt, or worse, it was an actual attack with some home made rocket. If it had been a real weapon, it likely would have hit the plane.
Because we are at war the gov. can stop certain stories from being played. They are not going to make this public if they can help it.
The problem is, if this event occured at 6000 feet, the aircraft would have to be far from shore at that point. I would guess an outbound aircraft out of LAX would have to be 10 miles out/off shore, or so before reaching an altitude of 6000 feet.
I don't see that figure in the article. Where did it come from?
Probably the same perps as covered up last time by Billy Jeff Clinton.
I wonder what FBI chief investigtor Kallstrom would have to say about this one now that Clinton can't muzzle him?
I swam in the area once and saw helo fly along the beach.
If this is the bottle.
"That AA flight was lucky it didn't explode at that exact moment due to faulty fuselage wiring." Not very likely, unless of course the wiring was in a near empty fuel tank that was still hot from the nearby A/C unit overheating.
No doubt, it was a law enforcement aircraft or Coast Guard, as they will get special clearance to do so.
Holy crap! Where do you get bottle rockets like that?
Some of the amateur rockets can get way up there. The bigger ones, which require FAA approval for launch, have set records from 50 to 70 miles high. For $100, you can get a rocket kit that, with the right motor, will easily go 7-10,000 feet, though the motors aren't sold in hobby shops.
Yes, I know rockets can get very high. But not bottle rockets.
Were the MythBusters in the area at that time? ;-)
This has SA -7 written all over it.
The SA-7 has a 5KM or less range, is strictly a tail chase weapon, has a very field of view in it's tracking system, and would be able to develop enough speed to go from the rear of the aircraft to the front of the aircraft like the reports are saying.
It's hard enough for a trained operator to shoot one and hit an aircraft. In my opinion, some evil-inspired pro terrorist gomer would not be able to use one properly and would be be prone to make mistakes like the one described by the pilot.
This weapon had to be launched from somewhere, chase the aircraft, catch up to it, and pass it for the pilot to see it's smoke trail passing the aircraft from the cockpit window. That means it had some pretty good speed to it. Commerical airliners are not slow.
I dont buy the bottle rocket thing, or the flare gun thing.
1. largish helium balloon
2. soda bottle tied to balloon string
3. bottle rocket placed in bottle
4. additional 3' of fuse added to bottle rocket fuse
5. ACME lable pasted onto side of balloon
6. coyote lights fuse and releases balloon
7. FBI expects me to believe it as fact
Gives a lot more credibility to that flight off of Long Island during the Clinton years. I forget the flt. #.
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