At about 8:00pm Sunday night, as he was waiting to depart at JFK, a Delta Airlines pilot spotted something strange floating through the early afternoon sky, seemingly coming down to land on runway 22R. He radioed the control tower, reporting what “looks like a guy on a paraglider” approaching the airport.
The controller then warned nearby pilots to look out for a “kite.” Shortly after, the Delta pilot radioed back in to say that the paraglider had touched down, dropped something off, and quickly took off into the night sky. “Looks like he hit the ground, dropped something off. Now he’s airborne again,” the pilot reported, adding, “I guess it ah, looks like some guy on a parachute.” The unidentified object/person then took off in the direction of oncoming traffic.
The location of the supposed touch-down was “near the Varig cargo building, on the northern border of the airport, adjacent to the approach paths for 22R and 22L,” FlightGlobal.com reports, but after authorities reportedly searched the area, they “found no trace of the UFO.”
YouTube user aeronauticstud who posted the tower communications sums up the incident, writing, “Something flew over 22L and 22R causing an American 767 to go around 22L to avoid it. Later ended up closing 22R for 5 Police helicopters to search for him and forcing several aircraft to divert due to being restricted to one runway. Seemed to come down to about 10-20 feet off the cargo ramp possibly dropping an object and then climbing to 1000 feet flying outbound on a 030hdg on an active final approach!”
Paragliding Suicide Bombers!!! Everyone panic!
I guess that’s yet another way to avoid TSA (in)security.
#1 – chuck
My thought as well.
proof of concept?
Panic? Why? It just proved the obvious. Airport security still has holes you can fly a small plane through.
I’ve thought about it and concluded that if they wanted to it would be trivial for a person with a brain to kill a few dozen to couple of hundred people any time they wanted to. You could do it with clip fed or stripper fed semiautomatic weapons at any of countless locations with crowds of unarmed people or a trailer truck hauling fuel or toxic chemicals.
The biggest mass murders ever pulled off in this country have been nightclub fires that were set. I think the weapons used were a bottle of fuel and a cigarette lighter. The management had chained the fire exits shut.
The formula is simple; find a crowded building, block the exits, and set the entrance on fire. Leave if you can.
Now I have a head ache. Looking at pictures of women with cloths falling off is a lot more cheerful.
What was in the package? It seems like that’s a major missing piece of this puzzle. . .
Here it comes, TSA regulation of kite boarders, para gliders, hang gliders, windsurfers, skateboarders, etc, etc. You know someone is going to start pushing such an agenda after this.
Gizmodo:
The question is: What the hell was he or she dropping? Why nobody has found the dropped object yet—if there was actually anything? Air, land, and sea police searches didn’t find any traces of this very stupid and insane person. Or whatever it was, because for now it’s just “unidentified.”
Pizza delivered in 30 minutes or less, an I ate it.
Hmm, liquid evaporates and gas disperses. I hope the crew that checked it out gets some check ups.
Who’s panicking?
This seems to be a theme here…something odd and suspicious happens, and one of the posters here reacts as if there has been a huge overreaction…when in fact no one seems to be caring a whole lot except those who would kind of like to know what just happened. Those Republican psycho-fear-mongers!
Tell you what, McCullough, next time you’re sitting in a plane waiting for takeoff and a paraglider swoops down next to your plane and then back up, don’t tell anyone, just go to sleep. Anything else would be fearmongering.
I don’t know if this ia anything, maybe the guy got caught in some wind, maybe he didn’t drop anything…they’ll find out, I’m sure. But if he turns out to be a Saudi chemistry student wearing a “Riyahd Sword-of-the-Jew-Killer High-school” t-shirt, then I’m going with #3’s hypothesis.
Isn’t it bad enough that planes are in danger by collisions with pigeons and geese–now they have to add ‘turkeys’ in para-gliders. Idiot….
I want to know how he “took off” with a parachute / paraglide without any help from the ground
#12 – They call ’em Paramotors. Which sounds like that’s what it was.