A China Airlines crew reported encountering what appeared to be an individual flying via jetpack in the vicinity of California’s Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Wednesday. The sighting, the second such report to be made at LAX in the past six weeks, occurred at about 1:45 p.m. local time. The jetpack was seen approximately seven miles northwest of the airport flying at 6,000 feet.
“The FBI is in contact with the FAA and is investigating multiple reports of what, according to witnesses, appeared to be an individual in a jetpack near LAX, including one today reported by a China Airlines crew,” said FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller. The FAA is also investigating the incident.
The first jetpack sighting at LAX, reported by American Airlines Flight 1997, occurred around 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 31. According to the crew, the jetpack came within 300 yards of the aircraft at an altitude of about 3,000 feet. As heard in the LiveATC.net audio recording below, the jetpack was also spotted by a second crew shortly after the first report.
Are these things parachute-equipped?
Flying a jet pack that high would be way too expensive for it to be kept secret. I am convinced its a UAV shaped like a human. There pretty common do a google image search for “remote control flying human” — so occam’s razor its either a $300,000 jet pack with someone rich enough to afford it but dumb enough to break airspace with it or its a $200 toy shaped like a person.
Not sure if the system will let me post a link but– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgACwfl6FBI
Flying seven miles northwest of LAX would be over a very heavily populated area of the city. If this were a human, they would have to land somewhere nearby and I find it difficult to believe someone would not have seen the flyer take off or land. Jet packs are not exactly silent, so getting airborne would attract a lot of attention.
Seven miles (statute) would actually put the (?) drone north of West Los Angeles. If the (?) drone was seven miles, that would not have put it anywhere near LAX. It would have put it slightly south of Malibu. Not even close to SMO in fact. I hope everyone got some enjoyment out of it, and if the youtube video was correct it surely was very low indeed, so much so that it wasn’t an issue for light aircraft (like a 172) either…no big deal!
Looks like another attempt for attention by some sort of piloted “thing” that is fast enough, large enough, and recognizable enough for 4 pilots to identify these flying “things” as JetPacks. Kudos to the airliner crews who seem to be looking outside occasionally, yet are not looking for specifically JetPacks. So, I would surmise, someone has a flying machine the size, speed, range, and shape to get the attention of commercial airline crews who would not normally be looking for this kind of traffic yet seeing them clearly enough to call ATC with an identity both crews and ATC recognize in a general way.
Plenty of RC lawn mower and Snoopy doghouse replicas flown. With many turbine RC airplanes capable of 250+kts, GPS with all sorts of stability systems on board, and modern drone technology that allows for beyond line of sight flight, I am sure some YouTuber has a RC, full scale, Jetman replica. That would allow for plenty of range, performance capability with even some stealth because of the relative low noise to launch and fly modern RC turbines.
Not saying it was Steve Holland but check out this YT video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw_I6jpOc3Q