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The pilot of the Southwest flight 4712 was convinced it was a plane (and “a large one”). At no point he mentioned considering it to be something else. On top of
by princekolt 9y ago
The pilot of the Southwest flight 4712 was convinced it was a plane (and “a large one”). At no point he mentioned considering it to be something else. On top of that he reported following the thing “for some 100 miles”.
Also, not many currently declassified stealth aircraft fit the description of being large and white.
I don’t know if knowing this was a large plane flying faster than cruise jets is more concerning than not.
- IntronExon 9y agoThere’s no reason to believe that it was stealthy, based only on the failure of civilian ATC to track it.
- PuffinBlue 9y agoWell, having just listened to the entire tapes, WADS clearly weren't seeing anything either as they were relying on vectoring the f-15s with info from civilian pilots with visual identification of the unknown aircraft relayed through the civ ATC operators. Presumably WADS has access to some of the most sophisticated radar equipment as isn't is part of NORAD? The suggestion being no one was tracking this aircraft, not just a failure of civ primary radar.
- 7dare 9y agoIt's not very hard for large planes to outpace a cruise jet, for the very reason that cruise speeds are rather far from maximum speeds. Even a cruise jet could outpace a cruise jet.
- kijin 9y agoDifferent airliners are optimized for different cruise speeds, too. Large planes like the 747 and A380 tend to fly faster by default than smaller planes like the 737. A large passenger jet with an airspeed close to Mach 0.9 in strong tail wind can sometimes show ground speed very close to, or even a bit over, what we normally take as Mach 1.
- zipwitch 9y agoLarge, white and fast you say? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Stratolaunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Stratolaunch