Lights in the Sky near Coast Guard Station

khazelwood

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Hello. I've lived by a coast guard air station and air force base and 2 airports for 5 years now and have been pretty customary to air traffic flying around to all of them. Recently I've noticed highly unlikely and extremely low flying aircraft that on video make me question what I saw when in person I have 100% no doubt what I saw was not an airplane or helicopter. My video annoys me because it doesn't show the details my own eyes did. I've looked up flight history & see nothing and have taken day time photos to show how low this aircraft actually was.
 

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Hello. I've lived by a coast guard air station and air force base and 2 airports for 5 years now and have been pretty customary to air traffic flying around to all of them. Recently I've noticed highly unlikely and extremely low flying aircraft that on video make me question what I saw when in person I have 100% no doubt what I saw was not an airplane or helicopter. My video annoys me because it doesn't show the details my own eyes did. I've looked up flight history & see nothing and have taken day time photos to show how low this aircraft actually was.
Are you checking the correct times on FlightRadar24? Your photos are from 10:46 p.m. local time and you have FlightRadar set to 22:46 UTC.

The UTC offset for St. Petersburg is -5 hours.

Which, if I'm doing this right, gives you this Allegiant A320:
1734296087112.png
 
An A320. That makes sense.

I was close...
At first glance, the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737 are very similar to one another. The A320 has a slightly more rounded nose. If you like to anthropomorphize your aircraft, we think it might perhaps lend it a slightly more friendly appearance. The Boeing's sharp, pointed nose and somewhat severe expression might make it appear a little more on the stern side, but again, that's just one personal opinion.



https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-vs-airbus-a320/#:~:text=The Airbus A320 and Boeing,a slightly more friendly appearance.
 
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Hello. I've lived by a coast guard air station and air force base and 2 airports for 5 years now and have been pretty customary to air traffic flying around to all of them. Recently I've noticed highly unlikely and extremely low flying aircraft that on video make me question what I saw when in person I have 100% no doubt what I saw was not an airplane or helicopter. My video annoys me because it doesn't show the details my own eyes did. I've looked up flight history & see nothing and have taken day time photos to show how low this aircraft actually was.
It's interesting you are certain it's not an airplane in your video. When I watch it all I see is a very clear airplane on final approach to land. For example there's tons of videos on YouTube like this
Source: https://youtube.com/shorts/F1LTkmatXBQ?si=4ONYpheZ2PeiC3Lm
and your video is very similar.

It's important to know our minds play tricks on us all the time, even the most skeptical experience it. Psychological priming and availability heuristics both strongly influence our perception. You can see the same thing every day, but if your subconscious expectation is primed to be different, you will notice things differently. Our brain uses heuristics to interpret things and given "drones" are all over TV its subconsciously more available during perception causing errors. Happens to everyone

It's also possible that if this plane was indeed flying much lower than typical, it might have been making a non-standard final approach. There are numerous reasons this could be the case. It would be interesting to see on another night. What planes look like flying over that location.
 
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