Pilot Reports ‘Missile’ Fired at Jetliner Near LAX
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.
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A bottle rocket?? Youre flying a zillion pound airliner the size of a small submarine with engine noise and whatnot and you can see/hear a tiny teeny bottle rocket that somehow made it to your altitude????
I smell cover up. There were reports a few years ago about a MANPAD* found at the end of a runway somewhere down south but then it dropped from the news quickly. Of course, the TWA 800 incident had people reporting missle trails and they were brushed off as freaks. (The TWA 800 incident, in my opinion, was an accidental shootdown by the navy who was training in waters nearby.)
Of course, if the missle had hit this flight from LAX we’d get some TSB and TSA story about a spark in the gas tank or something….until a video shows up on the internet of a couple guys actually shooting it.
Watch for this story to quickly disappear and for the usual suspects to mysteriously become more concerned about anti-missle defense for airliners.
* = Man Portable Air Defense System
It was more likely a contrail that the pilot saw as being far closer than it actually was during a turn, which made it look like it was passing the airplane. It’s hard to judge distances from the cockpit when you’re looking at something floating in the air, and your brain tends to tell you what you want to see (or are afraid of).
I doubt it was a MANPAD of any variety. A commercial aircraft does not have the counter-measures or manuverabilty to defeat a MANPAD, so it’s unlikely that a civil aircraft was fired upon by such.
It just doesn’t work, especially for the higher performance MANPADS (SA-14, etc.).
The TWA 800 incident, in my opinion, was an accidental shootdown by the navy who was training in waters nearby.
There are so many reasons why that’s not the case that I don’t know where to begin.
If it was a MANPAD, it was either a home-made one or the person firing it didn’t know how to use it. There isn’t a production shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile that would reasonably be expected to miss an airliner, well, ever, really.
Not a newer one, no. But Redeye and Grail are both old hat, and the Pk on those things isn’t all that impressive under the best of circumstances.
Re: Some Stats
The much older 9К32 “стрела-2” (SA-7 Grail) and the newer SA-14 have similar performance and size
To the Stinger?
SA-14 may be roughly comparable, but the Grail is not in the same league at all.
Fair enough. I was coming at it from the direction of what Al-Qaeda would be shopping for, and they are well enough financed to afford better equipment than that. Obviously other groups or unaffiliated sympathizers could be behind it if it were an actual attempt at an attack. Tunnel vision on my part.
flt 800
ever heard of the patriot.