Plane with Vertical Black Stripes

Mick West

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Staff member
This might be a long shot, but could be interesting. I saw this comment on geoengineeringwatch.org
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/...uled-weather-for-the-coming-winter-in-the-us/

bfb42c516e3b67517e2c2315e4f88526._.png Marc says:
August 19, 2015 at 7:19 am
I went to the Redding event from St. Louis. On my return flight thru Phoenix I witnessed a bizarre thing.I had a window seat and was attentively observing the filthy atmosphere and also two massive spray trails very close to the jet, going in a line slightly above us and in the same direction. Suddenly to my horror I witnessed what I think was a military tanker, but with really weird vertical black stripes painted all over it at regular intervals. And THIS THING WAS FLYING CLOSE TO US GOING OPPOSITE DIRECTION!!!!!!! It zoomed past us and slightly above us and was basically flying almost on the very edge of one of the massive trails. I mean, this sucker was TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT! I asked one of the flight attendants immediately what the minimum distance between craft was required by FAA. He said "one mile and a thousand feet up or down." I said "Are you kidding me? There is no way that tanker was a mile or more from our jet." I saw it clearly, and even with no aerial "point of reference" there is no way that tanker was "a mile or more away". I was quite frankly, shocked and alarmed. I mean, this craft was very strange looking with it's weird stripes. WTF!!!???
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It was probably 1000 feet below him, and fairly close. But is it possible to find the two planes, and see how close?

The flight must have been in daytime, so was likely Saturday Aug 15th. Going from Redding to St. Louis, by way of Phoenix.
 
really weird vertical black stripes painted all over it at regular intervals.
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Hard to think what thing might be. Might be misinterpreting things at a distance. Some options:



 
Air New Zealand has direct flights from Auckland to both Dallas and Houston using 777's. Probably them..


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I asked one of the flight attendants immediately what the minimum distance between craft was required by FAA. He said "one mile and a thousand feet up or down." I said "Are you kidding me? There is no way that tanker was a mile or more from our jet."
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Seems they misunderstood the "and", or misheard the "or".
 
If he did travel on Aug 15 from SFO then it would probably have been this flight. A US Airways/ American Airlines codeshare, flight 610. (Assuming it runs every Saturday: I just searched for the following Saturday)

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This might be a long shot, but could be interesting. I saw this comment on geoengineeringwatch.org
http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/...uled-weather-for-the-coming-winter-in-the-us/

bfb42c516e3b67517e2c2315e4f88526._.png Marc says:
August 19, 2015 at 7:19 am
I went to the Redding event from St. Louis. On my return flight thru Phoenix I witnessed a bizarre thing.I had a window seat and was attentively observing the filthy atmosphere and also two massive spray trails very close to the jet, going in a line slightly above us and in the same direction. Suddenly to my horror I witnessed what I think was a military tanker, but with really weird vertical black stripes painted all over it at regular intervals. And THIS THING WAS FLYING CLOSE TO US GOING OPPOSITE DIRECTION!!!!!!! It zoomed past us and slightly above us and was basically flying almost on the very edge of one of the massive trails. I mean, this sucker was TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT! I asked one of the flight attendants immediately what the minimum distance between craft was required by FAA. He said "one mile and a thousand feet up or down." I said "Are you kidding me? There is no way that tanker was a mile or more from our jet." I saw it clearly, and even with no aerial "point of reference" there is no way that tanker was "a mile or more away". I was quite frankly, shocked and alarmed. I mean, this craft was very strange looking with it's weird stripes. WTF!!!???
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It was probably 1000 feet below him, and fairly close. But is it possible to find the two planes, and see how close?


He said it went slightly above.

If it was flight US610 then a United flight heading in the opposite direction passed 1,000 feet above it and not far to the side.

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I don't see how it could be misinterpreted as black and white stripes though. Also the horizontal separation was no less than about 4 miles, if the tracks are correct.
 
This one also passed the flight, 1000ft above, on the other side.

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Could the "FRONTIER" logo look like black and white stripes from a distance?

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Could have flown from Sacramento as well. And we don't know whether this happened on the flight to Phoenix or from Phoenix. Too many possibilities.
 
Could have flown from Sacramento as well. And we don't know whether this happened on the flight to Phoenix or from Phoenix. Too many possibilities.
There appear to be only two flights a day for the Phoenix - St Louis leg: US652 in the morning and US484 in the afternoon.
 
I asked one of the flight attendants immediately what the minimum distance between craft was required by FAA. He said "one mile and a thousand feet up or down." I said "Are you kidding me? There is no way that tanker was a mile or more from our jet."
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Seems they misunderstood the "and", or misheard the "or".
This this, this this!

Fine, wasn't a mile. What about 1000 feet? Yeah? Case closed.
 
Well there;s clearly and clearly.
At times near where I live I often see planes coming into land at Bristol Airport.
If you display this picture: 86abaaa98bdb354844760d09323f6ca5.jpg
on a 17" monitor, and then sit about 10 feet back, it;s about the same size as it looks to the naked eye in real life, but at that point it is a good 2 miles away horizontally and 2,500 ish feet off the ground.
But I can still clearly see it is a small Airbus with Easyjet written on it.
 
i can't without my glasses. which i would never wear on a plane.
Which is another thing. We don;t know how good this person;s eyesight is, as well as we don;t know how good they actually are at distance perception and estimating how far away things are.

Also no explanation of WHY they thought it was a military tanker, except they may be the sort of person to predispose such things.
Military Tanker planes have a tendency to be painted a sort of drab grey colour, the US military also tends to use the boom style of refuelling instead of the probe and drogue style.
So anything that actually IS a military tanker SHOULD have some kind of boom folded up near the back of the tail AND/OR little pods under the wings for the little drogue baskets to wind out from.
 
Also no explanation of WHY they thought it was a military tanker
i get the impression alot of them call Everything a "tanker". maybe they think it means 'anything that sprays'..even commercial airlines (that they think spray).

i wonder too... if the E-W plane is flying at x miles an hour, and the W-E plane is flying at x miles an hour, and you are looking through a little airplane window, how many seconds exactly can you SEE the other plane? obviously not long enough to snap a pic with your phone (if he had one).

Add in humans notoriously bad 'memories', blurry vision, the oddness of the "Frontier" plane (ive never seen a plane with a full body logo before) and i could see thinking it was striped.
 
Also no explanation of WHY they thought it was a military tanker, except they may be the sort of person to predispose such things.
Military Tanker planes have a tendency to be painted a sort of drab grey colour, the US military also tends to use the boom style of refuelling instead of the probe and drogue style.

I wonder if there's any possibility it was some kind of military plane with camouflage
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Probably not a USAF transport if it was. They're all matte grey, with the possible exception of some aggressor aircraft that can be pretty safely discounted. Even the MC-130s are two toned grey (top and bottom) now instead of the green-black the 160th SOAR choppers use.
 
i wonder too... if the E-W plane is flying at x miles an hour, and the W-E plane is flying at x miles an hour, and you are looking through a little airplane window, how many seconds exactly can you SEE the other plane? obviously not long enough to snap a pic with your phone (if he had one).

Very little time. Even out of the cockpit window the closing speed is pretty impressive. There's a nice collection of "crossings" here:

 
I'm a sucker for punishment so went and read down the comments of the link posted.

Dude you've quoted has a follow up post...

Earth Angel, Hi!
The weird craft I saw was flying the opposite direction off the left side of the jet and up a little bit. Because of this we passed each other pretty damn fast. Zoom…and gone. I just happened to be gazing out and up at the spray trails when this thing zoomed by. But I got a real good look at it, and I would realistically estimate it's distance to have been approximately 800-1000 ft., I kid you not!!! Not any chance this craft was a mile or more away. No chance. Weird slightly zig-zag black vertical stripes on silver fuselage, from nose to tail. Many passengers had shades down on that side but don't know if anyone else saw it. The flight attendant, of course, did not see it either. I find his comments interesting in relation to the googobs of extra jets dishing out their shit that we common morons are not allowed to track on public sites.
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I believe he isn't kidding :)
 
The weird craft I saw was flying the opposite direction off the left side of the jet and up a little bit. Because of this we passed each other pretty damn fast. Zoom…and gone. I just happened to be gazing out and up at the spray trails when this thing zoomed by. … Weird slightly zig-zag black vertical stripes on silver fuselage, from nose to tail.
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They may have a 747 as well:
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if it were 1000 feet away, it might be visible for maybe a bit less than a mile (being generous with airline window viewing angels) With the closing speed of 1000 mph it would pass in under four seconds, and more likely would only be observable for one or two seconds.

It seems more likely it was a large plane a mile or more away.
 
The flight must have been in daytime, so was likely Saturday Aug 15th. Going from Redding to St. Louis, by way of Phoenix.
I couldn't join solving this mystery earlier as I was on holiday the last week with a limited access to the internet.
I've checked the MODIS satellite images for June 15 for contrails along his route, the most prominent area was around the lake Tachoe, e.g., in the Terra image:
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Here is a ground image from the webcam archive with parallel trails going in approximate S-N direction:
Screen Shot 2015-08-24 at 14.50.52.png

I've checked FR24 for the airlines flying along this approximate route, of these the Alaska Airlines appear to have suitable plane livery with the airline logo written in large black letters on the plane sides. There is the Alaska Air Cargo division, which planes have more letters and fewer windows (see my post above, #21). While zooming by, one of these could easily be (mis)taken for a "tanker" with "weird slightly zig-zag black vertical stripes on silver fuselage, from nose to tail".
 
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