Transcript of American flight 612 We may never know if it was a missile, a flare or something else that the pilot of American Airlines flight 612 saw come up from the sea after takeoff from LAX last November. In March, Brian Ross, Jill Rackmill and Eric Longabardi at ABC News reported Sen. Barbara Boxer saying that authorities "cannot rule out the fact that it was a shoulder-fired missile." ABC News obtained unedited audiotapes of the radio exchange between the pilot and air traffic control that didn't make it onto the air; here is a partial transcript: ....