A person has been spotted flying in a jetpack at more than 6,000 feet by cabin crew near LA International airport.
It’s the second time in just over a month that someone has been seen crossing a flight path near one of the world’s busiest runways.
The sighting on Wednesday afternoon caused air traffic controllers to warn an approaching commercial pilot who was about to land at the airport.
A crew member on a China Airlines flight reported seeing the ‘flying object’ at around 1.45pm seven miles north west of LAX, according to the Federal Aviation Authority.
In a radio recording from the airport, obtained by ABC 7, a voice can be heard saying: ‘Flying object – was it a UAV or was it a jet pack? 215 heavy, there was a jetpack reported about 13 miles ahead.’
An air traffic controller overseeing airline approaches also reported seeing what appeared to be a person in a jetpack at around 6,500 feet.
It comes after two pilots reported seeing a man in a jetpack flying near the eastern approach to LAX six weeks ago.
During that incident, on August 29, the pilots radioed in the sightings to the control tower at around 6:45 p.m, according to the L.A Times.
‘Tower, American 1997. We just passed a guy in a jet pack,’ an American Airlines pilot said.
‘American 1997, OK, thank you. Were they off to your left or right side?’ the tower operator responded.
‘Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude,’ the pilot said
‘We just saw the guy pass us by in the jet pack,’ a pilot from Jet Blue Airways then told the tower. At one point the air traffic controller is reported as saying: ‘Only in L.A.’
Officials from the airport and the FAA are investigating the sightings. The FBI is also understood to be looking into what happened.
But some have raised doubts that the flying object could have been a jetpack.
The record height reached by a pilot in one of these machines was set in February when Vince Reffett, known as ‘jetman’, reached an altitude of 5,905 feet in Dubai.
That was only possible with four mini jet engines and he has to return to earth in a parachute.
The LAX sighting was said to be even higher than this record, which some experts think is unlikely.
Speaking about the first sighting back in August, David Mayman, CEO of Jetpack Aviation, told CBS: ‘It’s very, very unlikely with the existing technology.
‘I’m open to being surprised. But I don’t think there’s anyone working on technology that could do a flight from ground level to 3,000 feet and then come back down again.
‘They’d run out of fuel, they use fuel too quickly. If it’s a real jetpack, it’s noisy. People would have heard it take off and land.’
He said any jetpack capable of flying such a height ‘would had to have been built by the pilot themselves’ because there isn’t anything capable of reaching this altitude that’s available to buy.
Jetpacks are banned by the FAA from flying ‘over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement’ and, if caught, anyone breaking the rules could be fined nearly $30,000.
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