Was rocket moments from striking Continental flight?

A Continental airliner might have been only a minute away from colliding with what the pilot described as a model rocket that shot past his cockpit window ...

But, according to the transcript quoted in the article, the pilot never mentions a "model rocket" ... and he does not describe anything as shooting past his cockpit window.

Terror in the Skies?

The article goes on to imply that the airliner may have been "only a minute away from colliding" with a "model rocket." But there's no evidence that the aircraft was "a minute away from colliding" with anything.

In fact, the article says:

The plane had then reached 4,750 feet elevation and was traveling at 277 mph, records show. [...] "Can you tell me what this is on my 12 o'clock (in front of his plane)? It's climbing about 20 miles up. Is that a rocket launch?" he [the pilot] asks.

So, the plane was at 4750 feet and the alleged "rocket" was "20 miles up." Unless Pythagoras of Samos was wrong, that means more than 19 miles separated the aircraft and the "rocket." Therefore, there was no chance of a collision.

Model rockets reach a maximum of a couple thousand feet in altitude - much lower than the aircraft's altitude. No rocket (except really large ones used to launch things into space) would leave an exhaust trail twenty miles long or twenty miles up in the air. A rocket large enough to leave a 20-mile long exhaust trail (the Space Shuttle, for example) would have been visible for miles around and would have shown up on radar.

Later in the article, an air traffic controller is quoted as asking another pilot if he saw a rocket launch in the area. The pilot responds "See some contrail up here, but that's about it."

And that's most likely what the pilots of the Continental airliner saw - a contrail (vapor trail) from another aircraft. They most definitely did not see a rocket.

So, was a rocket moments from striking a Continental flight?

So we can now answer the question, "was a rocket moments from striking a Continental flight?"

The answer is "No."

What Me Worry?

The airliner did not change its course and there was no incident report filed with the FAA. So it's obvious that the pilots of Flight 1544 were not very concerned with what they saw. Since no report was filed with the FAA, it appears that the FBI's brief investigation of the report was inspired by a reporter's query, and not instigated through official channels.

The first published reports appeared very shortly after the alleged incident. Therefore, it's appropriate to assume that a reporter, listening in on the frequencies pilots use to talk to air traffic controllers, heard the brief exchange between the pilot of Flight 1544 and a controller. The reporter then contacted someone from the FBI for a comment. Unaware of the real situation, the FBI representative made an off-hand remark that "it could have been a model rocket." As a precaution, the FBI made some inquiries into the report. But, after learning that no offical report of the incident had been made to the FAA - and that a rocket was unlikely to have been involved - the FBI stopped looking into the matter.

Borrowing Occam's Razor

A high-power rocket capable of reaching twenty miles in altitude (or even ten miles) would be very large - on the order of 10 or 20 feet long, a foot or two in diameter, and weighing 100 pounds or more. It would produce dense smoke only for the first second or two of flight (up to, maybe 2000 feet). After that it would coast. While coasting, it would leave, at the most, a faint exhaust trail - not the "long vapor trail" the pilot is said to have seen (and certainly not the "dense black" trail the co-pilot described). The only rockets that leave really long trails are ones that launch things into space - such as the Delta IV and the Space Shuttle.

To assume that the pilots saw a rocket, we would have to assume that someone illegally launched a very large rocket without anyone on the ground reporting it. We would have to assume that the rocket also returned to earth without anyone seeing it. If it came down under a parachute, the rocket's parachute would have been large and very visible. If it came in ballistic, it would have left a large hole in the ground. And, yet, no one on the ground saw it. We would also have to assume the rocket was either very visible - or left an incredibly long exhaust trail - so that the pilot was able to see it "20 miles up."

On the other hand, pilots, just like everyone else, sometimes make mistakes about things they see. And, there are no road signs or trees or whatever in the air to use to judge distances and speeds. The pilot described seeing a "white vapor trail" and that probably is what he saw. The co-pilot saw a "dense black" trail which is what a vapor trail looks like when backlit by the sun. According to the article, a later pilot reported seeing just "contrails" (vapor trails) when asked by ATC.

Someone covertly launching a large rocket near a metropolitan area without anyone on the ground noticing is almost impossible to imagine. But, pilots have been known to make mistakes. It doesn't make for exciting headlines, but it's much easier to assume that the pilots were wrong about seeing a rocket.