Some kind of protest against drones taking away people's jobs of pestering aircraft mid-flight?
Tue 1 Sep 2020 / 20:26 UTC - Shaun Nichols
The pilots of a passenger jet landing at LA International reckon they were approached by a mysterious flyer equipped with what was described as a “jetpack,” passing within a few hundred yards of their aircraft.
The encounter occurred Sunday evening local time as American Airlines flight 1997, flying out of Philadelphia, was descending on the airport at about 3,000 feet when the pilot noticed something off the left side of the plane. The co-pilot confirmed the sighting.
In a recording of the radio channel between the passenger jet and air traffic control, shared online by TV station Fox 11, a somewhat incredulous-sounding aviator can be heard telling the tower “we just passed a guy in a jetpack” who came within roughly 300 yards of the airliner.
Even in an era in which congress wants to openly investigate UFOs, a dude flying alongside an airliner over Los Angeles in a jetpack is still bonkers
By Tyler Rogoway - September 1, 2020
s if 2020 couldn't get any weirder, airline pilots landing at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sunday, August 30th, reported seeing “a guy in a jetpack” flying about 300 yards off their wing while on final approach to the bustling airport. What makes the reports even stranger is that, like a scene out of The Rocketeer, the airliners were descending through 3,000 feet when jetpack guy showed up next to them.
Fox 11 broke the story and has the air traffic control audio clips which you can listen to here. The exchanges went like this according to their report:
Tom McKay - 1 September 2020 9:50PM
Did you fly a jetpack over Los Angeles at approximately 3,000 feet on Sunday? Some kind of tiny helicopter? Maybe a lawn chair with balloons tied to it?
If the answer to any of the above questions is “yes,” you should probably lay low for a while (by which I mean cool it on the single-occupant flying machine). That’s because passing airline pilots spotted you, and now it’s this whole thing with the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration, both of which are investigating.
https://gizmodo.com/did-you-fly-a-jetpack-over-los-angeles-this-weekend-be-1844923772
By Yaron Steinbuch - December 25, 2020 | 6:55am
It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no, it’s apparently a guy in a jet pack.
Dramatic video captured by an instructor with the Sling Pilot Academy shows what could be the elusive flier whose exploits in the skies above Los Angeles have confounded pilots and authorities alike.
The flight school pilot took the video at about 3,000 feet near Palos Verdes, south of LA, with Catalina Island visible in the background, according to an Instagram post by the academy.
“The video appears to show a jet pack, but it could also be a drone or some other object,” it wrote.
https://nypost.com/2020/12/25/dramatic-video-appears-to-capture-elusive-la-jet-pack-guy/
Posted by BeauHD on Thursday December 24, 2020 11:00PM
We now have credible video of what appears to be the elusive "Jet Pack Guy" flying around at thousands of feet near Los Angeles International Airport. The Drive reports:
The footage doesn't come to us from some random Reddit board or YouTube channel, either. It was taken during an instructional flight from Sling Pilot Academy in the training area off Palos Verdes. We reached out to the flight school, which is based out of Zamperini Field, in Torrance, California for additional details. One of the pilots involved in the bizarre incident told The War Zone that they were flying along their route in the practice area between Palos Verdes and Catalina Island when they caught what appeared to at least resemble a guy in a jet pack flying towards them in the opposite direction at about 3,000 feet. The object passed along the right side of their aircraft and kept going until it was out of sight.
Matt Novak - 27 December 2020 6:00AM
A pilot in Southern California has captured video of what appears to be a person flying a jetpack, the first visual evidence of an unexplained flying object that seems similar to a reported jetpack sighting near the Los Angeles airport in August. But we still have a lot of questions about what we’re seeing in the video and local authorities haven’t shared any answers.
The video, captured by a pilot for Sling Pilot Academy and uploaded to YouTube, is from December 21 and was captured at an altitude of roughly 3,000 feet near Palos Verdes, California. The island in the background is Catalina Island, according to Sling Pilot Academy.
https://gizmodo.com/l-a-s-mystery-jetpack-allegedly-captured-on-video-but-1845955170
The mystery aeronaut has been spotted at least twice before
By Michael Ruiz | Fox News - 26 December 2020
The unidentified flying man in Los Angeles has finally been caught on video – soaring 3,000 feet above Palos Verdes near Catalina Island with a jetpack.
The mystery aeronaut has been spotted at least twice before, in the summer and fall, but now there’s video, posted to the Instagram account of the Sling Pilot Academy, a local aviation school.
The video, which the school said one of its flight instructors recorded Monday, appears to show a solitary man sailing through the sky above the water off the California coast.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/los-angeles-pilot-finally-captures-elusive-jetpack-man-on-video
Lucas Ropek - Wednesday 20 January 2021 8:10PM
Bizarre, ongoing sightings of what appears to be a man flying a jetpack at high altitudes have understandably baffled the public. The sightings, which started last August, have involved multiple commercial airline pilots and have all taken place at incredibly high elevations—up to 6,000 feet in the air. People naturally want to know: is it aliens? A military experiment? Some guy sent from the future to taunt us with superior technology?
Recently released documents hint at another possibility: The sightings may not be a real flesh and blood person at all, but instead a life-like mannequin, carried aloft by a drone.
https://gizmodo.com/mysterious-jetpack-guy-could-actually-be-this-weird-man-1846095198
Lucas Ropek - 15 March 2021
If you need further proof that we are living in a literal science fiction movie right now, look no further than the fact that the U.S. Defense Department is thinking about strapping jetpacks onto its special forces cadres. Well, actually the term they are using is “portable personal air mobility system,” but you get the picture.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s R&D hub for new military technologies, recently opened a bid for research proposals involving said “air mobility” systems. The agency has offered up to $1.5 million in development costs to vendors willing to make flying commandos a reality.
https://gizmodo.com/apparently-the-pentagon-is-thinking-of-giving-jetpacks-1846481713
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday July 31, 2021 08:34AM
ABC News reports:
A Boeing 747 pilot near Los Angeles reported Wednesday night another “possible jet pack man in sight.” It's the latest in a string of mysterious jet pack sightings near the City of Angels since last year.
“A Boeing 747 pilot reported seeing an object that might have resembled a jet pack 15 miles east of LAX at 5,000 feet altitude around 6:12 p.m. Wednesday,” a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told ABC News. “Out of an abundance of caution, air traffic controllers alerted other pilots in the vicinity.” Air traffic controllers could be heard directing pilots in the area to “use caution towards the jet pack.” The FAA spokesperson said there were no “unusual objects” that had appeared on the radar around LAX around that time on Wednesday.
Startup aims to make piloting a jetpack as easy as flying a drone
Edd Gent - 22 September 2021
etpacks might sound fun, but learning how to control a pair of jet engines strapped to your back is no easy feat. Now a British startup wants to simplify things by developing a jetpack with an autopilot system that makes operating it more like controlling a high-end drone than learning how to fly.
Jetpacks made the leap from sci-fi to the real world as far back as the 1960s, but since then the they haven't found much use outside of gimmicky appearances in movies and halftime shows. In recent years though, the idea has received renewed interest. And its proponents are keen to show that the technology is no longer just for stuntmen and may even have practical applications.
Ah well, back to panicking over imaginary drones, then
Team Register Wed 3 Nov 2021 / 04:06 UTC
Video Passenger jet pilots who reported what looked like a man in a jetpack flying over Los Angeles may have just been seeing runaway balloons.
That's according to the FBI this week.
If you can cast your mind back to August last year, you may recall the tale of American Airlines pilots claiming someone equipped with what was described as a “jetpack” flying awfully close to their aircraft on final approach to LA International Airport.
Similar sightings by pilots of a brave bloke seemingly strapped to a rocket hovering over southern California were reported that October and July this year.
Well, the FBI and America's aviation watchdog, the FAA, have gone over these reports, and it appears the truth of the matter may be a little mundane. In a statement to the media, the Feds said on Tuesday:
The FBI has worked closely with the FAA to investigate reported jetpack sightings in the Los Angeles area, none of which have been verified. One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons.
This conclusion was revealed by the g-men following the emergence of images taken by a police helicopter in November 2020, a couple of weeks after the second sighting of the mystery flyer.
“One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons,” authorities said.
Nov. 1, 2021, 7:57 PM PDT / Updated Nov. 1, 2021, 10:18 PM PDT - Eric Leonard and Tim Stelloh
LOS ANGELES — Authorities investigating a series of possible jetpack sightings over Los Angeles believe they may have identified an explanation for the mysterious reports — one that requires no fuel, no engines, and no high-flying technology.
“One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons,” the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Federal Aviation Administration said in statements after NBC Los Angeles obtained police video and photos that appear to show a human-shaped inflatable toy floating above Beverly Hills.
The theory gained support after images captured by a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter crew last year showed a human-shaped balloon — believed to be a life-sized Jack Skellington, of Tim Burton’s “A Nightmare Before Christmas” — thousands of feet in the air.