December 02, 2005

Another Isolated Incident?

Possible SAM launch at an airliner:

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.

According to the article, the FBI seems to think that it is either a flare or a bottle rocket.

I dunno, most airline pilots are ex-military, I'm sure they can tell the difference between a flare and a SAM. As far as a bottle rocket? Please. I fired hundreds, possibly thousands of those things in my youth, I hardly think they would be mistaken for a SAM by even the most green of pilots.

However, at this early point in time, the door to all possibilities remains open.

Another odd thing is that the date underneath the headline is 11/28, 4 days ago.

I just found this story at Drudge a couple of minutes ago, and I did a Google news search and found only 2 stories, dated today.

Interesting.

As the big boys say, developing....

UPDATE:

Yup, already. The Blog Grandfather was on this earlier.

He links to this from Bill Quick:

UPDATE: I just talked with an FBI spokesman from the Los Angeles bureau who told me that the sighting was of "a contrail." The spokesman added that "all investigative leads were vetted and the results were negative." The investigation is now closed.

A contrail? A pardonmyfrenchgoddamncontrail?

A contrail results when water vapor in the air is heated by the friction of the airplane and then immediately condenses in the cooler air behind it (or something like that).

If this was a contrail....Where was the airplane that made it? Are they suggesting he saw his own plane's contrail?

UPDATE II: Further surfing shows that WitNit has been on this for some time now.

Granted, I wasn't there at the time it happened, but really, the explanations being put forth don't make much sense.