Concepción de León, The New York Occasions
October 15, 2020 | 3:25 PM
For the second time in six weeks, crew members on a business airliner flying close to Los Angeles Worldwide Airport on Wednesday discovered that they had been sharing the skies with an individual hovering solo over Southern California in a jetpack.
The newest encounter was reported to have occurred at an altitude of 6,000 toes — almost six occasions the peak of the Wilshire Grand Tower, the tallest constructing not solely in Los Angeles however west of the Mississippi.
A China Airways crew noticed the particular person about 1:45 p.m. Wednesday roughly 7 miles northwest of the airport, the Federal Aviation Administration mentioned. The company is investigating the report.
A spokeswoman for the FBI mentioned, “We’re conscious of the report and are involved with the FAA,” however declined to remark additional. Federal officers mentioned final month that they had been investigating the sooner jetpack sighting by two business pilots.
On Aug. 29, an American Airways pilot referred to as the management tower about 6:45 p.m. and reported seeing what seemed to be a person with a jetpack at about 3,000 toes.
Shortly after that trade, a JetBlue pilot mentioned he had additionally seen the person move by. After asking the JetBlue pilot to maintain a lookout, the controller added, “Solely in LA.”
The sightings at such excessive altitudes are shocking, given that the majority jetpacks should not geared up to fly for quite a lot of minutes or to go very excessive. Flying in busy airspace like that round a significant metropolis’s airport additionally presents the danger of a collision with a jetliner or of being drawn right into a airplane’s engine.
Some are nonetheless making an attempt high-altitude flights. Earlier this 12 months, a pilot from Jetman Dubai, a group of pilots making an attempt to push the boundaries of autonomous human flight, flew nearly 6,000 feet up utilizing a jetpack in a flight that lasted three minutes. The touchdown was aided by a parachute.
And JetPack Aviation, primarily based within the San Fernando Valley space of Los Angeles, invented what it calls “the world’s solely JetPack,” which may attain as much as 15,000 toes in altitude and function for about 10 minutes. The corporate doesn’t promote its jetpack, but it surely permits those that full a three-week coaching program to function it in a managed house.
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