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Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#421
post #372
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think glassdoor is full of shit. https://123atc.com/salary More like 70-180, and then the potential for significant overtime as well.

This makes way more sense. From the person I knew in ATC a while back, it actually paid pretty well. Plus you're a federal employee, so the benefits tend to be quite good and make up for a lower salary.

The hours can be pretty rough, though.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#422

As amusing as this is, it highlights how fragile air travel is -- someone managed to fly a 200 lb payload within a couple hundred feet of an airliner on final approach. And apparently did so anonymously since there was no mention of who or exactly what it was. It wouldn't be hard to maneuver it right in front of the airliner and cause a collision. While the aircraft would likely survive an engine strike, at only a fe…

I have thought about how fragile airport security is anytime I drive to an airport. Its almost like we are wasting money on TSA but like... The airstrips only guarded from public roads by a fence that I cant imagine takes much effort to get past. Others have also mentioned its not impossible to weaponize a laptop battery. Hell get enough cell phones on board?

Honestly just a well flung pipe bomb over the fence from outside the property line would do some damage to an airport.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#423

As amusing as this is, it highlights how fragile air travel is -- someone managed to fly a 200 lb payload within a couple hundred feet of an airliner on final approach. And apparently did so anonymously since there was no mention of who or exactly what it was. It wouldn't be hard to maneuver it right in front of the airliner and cause a collision. While the aircraft would likely survive an engine strike, at only a fe…

Is there really anything stopping someone from taking a little gopro mounted drone and crashing it into the engine of a 747 taking off at LAX? I doubt you'd even get caught if you are on the move immediately before LAPD rallies a police helicopter. I don't know why this sort of stuff doesn't happen way more often, be it state actor or insane person.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#424
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very fragile. It always baffles me how close to the ground airplanes fly during take-off and landing and how there aren't lunatics messing with them more often. In the US there are places where it is legal for a regular Joe to stand underneath an airplane on approach, 200ft off the ground with the type of gun/rifle that could cause serious damage and bring it down.

Airplanes fly close to the ground during take off and landing because that's where they're going or coming from...

I see where the commenter is coming from. We spend millions of dollars on technology that can see your manhood perfectly through your clothes, yet 300 yards away from every TSA checkpoint at any american airport is some rusty po dunk fence where you are pretty much in range of striking the engine of a jet plane with a well flung rock. It's an asymmetric warfare specialist's wet dream, and the whole purpose of creating the TSA was in response to asymmetric warfare. It's baffling why we even bother, unless you remember that people are making a good deal of money off of this graft selling manhood scanners to the taxpayer.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#425
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very fragile. It always baffles me how close to the ground airplanes fly during take-off and landing and how there aren't lunatics messing with them more often. In the US there are places where it is legal for a regular Joe to stand underneath an airplane on approach, 200ft off the ground with the type of gun/rifle that could cause serious damage and bring it down.

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. Doing such a thing is already illegal, so making it illegal to also be under the flight path won't stop that person; by definition, they already don't care about the law.

Presumably if it were illegal there would be some security in place. Maybe a fine, but maybe even a security camera, or a larger fenced area, or whatever. Something beyond nothing at all. My home depot has more security around the garden center than the fringes of the airfield at LAX. Right now you can picnic under planes taking off right outside LAX. If you wanted to invoke some asymmetrical warfare, just open your picnic basket and fly your quad copter drone straight up into the flight path.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are youtube videos of ATC recordings (with transcripts) of pilots losing their cool. You are right, I don't think any ATC lost their cool in any of the recordings I've listened to. This quote from the article made me smile: >> Another pilot chimed in: "Only in LA."

Not ATC but here's a classic viral recording of a frazzled ground controller herding cats at JFK airport in NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMDkwfkXv0

I don't understand all the jargon but it sounds great with a New York accent.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#427
post #275
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't there a guy who crashed the train he was driving because he'd been radicalised by Q nonsense?

Yes, a train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles intentionlly crashed his train in April because he was suspicious of the nearby Navy hospital ship Mercy . '“You only get this chance once. The whole world is watching. I had to," Moreno told investigators, according to the complaint. "People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”' (Nothing about this story makes sense to me.) https://www.navytimes.com/news/y…

He must've been hoping the earth was flat enough that he could drive the train across water or something. Simultaneously amazing and terrifying that he could be put in charge of something so deadly despite what I'm sure is obvious mental instability.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#428
post #25
post #8

I'm surprised that there's not a single picture of this from any of the passengers on the landing flight and that ATC didn't seem to confirm it via radar, either.

ATC primary radar can’t resolve objects that small, and the jetpack-person was unlikely to have the requisite transponder to make it visible to secondary.

That's interesting. Do you have any reading material on the relative resolutions of primary vs. secondary airport radars? Given the shape and profile of a human with a jetpack (basically zero angles), I just assumed that such a person would be easily radar visible.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not ATC but here's a classic viral recording of a frazzled ground controller herding cats at JFK airport in NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMDkwfkXv0

I don't understand all the jargon but it sounds great with a New York accent.

Most of it is just using the ICAO/NATO phonetic alphabet to identify taxiways by their one- or two-letter codes. It makes a bit more sense if you have a JFK taxiway map in front of you.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it is impossible to forget. My wife at the time and I got a call waking us from a friend telling us to turn on the news. It was all surreal from that moment on. The second plane may have just hit the second tower by the time we turned on the TV and they didn't know quite what happened yet.

I am not even from the United States and I got a call to turn on the TV. That was before the second plane. I couldn't believe it. We did have access to US channels and the reporters appeared to be confused when the second plane hit and thought it was a replay.

I've never lived in the US either, but I got a phone call from my partner who was panicking about George Bush starting WW3. I said that wasn't really a concern, it was just a terrorist attack and you can't really nuke terrorists.

To be fair, we never really know what some of the more loopy US presidents may do, though.

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