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Mystery 'Missile' Identified As US Airways Flight 808

Posted by timothy on from the just-what-they-want-you-to-think dept.

sean.peters writes "The mystery missile discussed on Slashdot Tuesday? It was US Airways 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix. An amateur sleuth checked the time against airline schedules, then the following day, checked out a webcam that was trained in the appropriate direction. He found the exact same contrail at the time AWE808 was coming over. The author deals persuasively with a number of objections to his argument."

2 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Sounds like the standard counter intelligence by Wonko+the+Sane · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So yeah, if you believe that the government can create that good of a cover story with that much independent evidence in a 36 hour period, well, you have more faith in government agencies than I do.

    That's the bizarre thing - why did it take 36 hours to get an answer and why didn't the definitive answer come from a definitive source?

    So it was flight 808. Either the DoD and FAA were unable to figure that out in short order or else they just don't care about giving the public answers to those kind of questions.

    Neither one of those possibilities is particularly good.

  2. Daylight Savings Change by JoelWink · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think one aspect of this story that hasn't been mentioned is the fact that daylight savings time kicked in the previous day. So, let's say this is a regular weekday flight that arrives in Phoenix in the early evening. After the November 7th "fall back" daylight savings time change, this flight, which may have passed over L.A. in bright daylight on Friday November 5th, is now illuminated on Monday November 8th with dramatic dusk lighting, resulting in a very different looking contrail.