‘We just passed a guy in a jetpack.’ Pilot reports sighting near Los Angeles airport

A routine arrival at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday night turned out to be anything but routine when a pilot glanced out his cockpit window, air traffic recordings show.

“Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack,” the American Airlines pilot says, KABC reported. An air traffic controller asks where he saw the jetpack.

“Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude,” replies the pilot, according to the station. The airliner was flying at 3,000 feet. The Federal Aviation Administration and Los Angeles police had no other information on the incident.

Air traffic controllers then warned other pilots about the sighting, prompting one to reply, “Only in L.A.,” KTTV reported.

In February, a jetpack pilot set an altitude record of 5,905 feet in Dubai, People reported. The pilot took off from the ground using a carbon-fiber wing powered by four mini jet engines.

This story was originally published September 1, 2020 at 11:51 AM with the headline "‘We just passed a guy in a jetpack.’ Pilot reports sighting near Los Angeles airport."