Unidentified object, departing Logan Intl Airport USA - February 12th 2024

[ManInBlack]

Date of sighting: February 12, 2024.
Flight AA5795 (https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL5795/history/20240212/2343Z/KBOS/KMDT)
Description: Flight departed from Boston Logan International Airport, MA, US. The object went from right to left to right...the object went 180 degrees in a second. The Object goes from one coast to the other in front of the pilot and then goes up 30 degrees turned off its lights. It looked like a bright orangey thing. It flashed the pilots three or four times. Object was 60-80 miles in front and looked like it was flashing towards the pilots.

SOURCE:

 

[Ann K]

@ManInBlack
This is only a verbal claim. There's not really anything to go on except that, so I doubt there's any more we can do with it unless it is reported by other observers. I do notice the same familiar "I know what I saw" scenario, in which he not only gives a distance (which is actually indeterminate) but declares "It's definitely not an airplane", which is something he doesn't know.

 

[Eburacum]

One problem is that the pilot said it went from 'coast to coast', while this is interpreted as travelling '180 degrees in a second'. I do not believe it is physically possible for anyone to accurately observe a phenomenon which travels '180 degrees in a second', especially from within the confines of an aircraft cockpit. Even in the open air, you couldn't move your head fast enough to reliably keep such a fast-moving object in view.

 

[MapperGuy]

One potential way to get an effect as described would be for someone outside the plane to shine a laserpointer at the front of the plane and swipe it back and forth across the cockpit windows. The pilot would not be seeing something distant, just the laser light passing across his field of vision. Quite a bit different from seeing a distant object of course, but the description sounds more like a momentary flash of light, not a steady bright object at a distance.

 

[Easy Muffin]

Date of sighting: February 12, 2024.

I posted about this a few days ago. The date is wrong, it's most likely Jan 1. Also note that the original video that the audio clips were taken from was uploaded a day earlier, on Feb 11.

I discussed it shortly in this post: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/wh...mostly-reported-from-planes.12720/post-310968

@Mick West then helpfully recreated it in Sitrec - https://www.metabunk.org/u/zkuUEJ.html. Everything points towards the lights being yet another example of flaring Starlink sats.

 

[Ann K]

Everything points towards the lights being yet another example of flaring Starlink sats

Yet he declares it to be bright orange and describes rapid motion ("in a second") which sounds to me more like the reflection of an interior light. The rest of the description sounds more like the slower glare of Starlink flares.

Speculation: I wonder if the date is completely wrong, as last year's fires in Canada sent enough smoke down over the eastern USA to make any light appear orange.

 

[Easy Muffin]

Yet he declares it to be bright orange and describes rapid motion ("in a second") which sounds to me more like the reflection of an interior light. The rest of the description sounds more like the slower glare of Starlink flares.

Maybe, though my first idea was that it's the effect caused by several individual Starlink sats moving in different directions and flaring in succession, thus creating the illusion of one object rapidly changing course or even reversing. The Sitrec shows an arrangement like that from around 0139Z onwards. That seems to be around the time the crew made the observation. We've seen this happen before in other reports.

Speculation: I wonder if the date is completely wrong, as last year's fires in Canada sent enough smoke down over the eastern USA to make any light appear orange.

Going by the original video from the post I linked I'd be very surprised if the same flight numbers showed up in the same spot at a different date. Everything fits exactly for Jan 1, including flights like JBU2959, which was a service to Ft Lauderdale that was suspended on Jan 4, or EJA566, a Cessna Citation business jet that doesn't follow a set schedule but flies wherever the clients need it to be. Very low chance this situation occurs more than once.


https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/JBU2959


https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n566qs

 

[Dave Beaty]

Date of sighting: February 12, 2024.
Flight AA5795 (https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/AAL5795/history/20240212/2343Z/KBOS/KMDT)

So Jan 1 or Jan 2? Or Feb 12th this report is all over the place, as far as the actual time and flight of the aircraft that made the call. Anyone figure out which is the actual flight number? The ATC audio was allegedly uploaded on Feb 11th which was also mentioned here. Here is my Sitrec of the Feb 12th flight from Logan to Harrisburg using Mick's tool https://www.metabunk.org/u/Z2W8wa.html

 

[John J.]

One potential way to get an effect as described would be for someone outside the plane to shine a laserpointer at the front of the plane and swipe it back and forth across the cockpit windows.

Would a laserpointer beam be coherent enough at (presumably) several hundred metres to be seen as a dot or a small disc (or whatever the claimed orangey thing resembled) on cockpit windows?

 

[MapperGuy]

Would a laserpointer beam be coherent enough at (presumably) several hundred metres to be seen as a dot or a small disc (or whatever the claimed orangey thing resembled) on cockpit windows?

I would not think so. If the plane was on the ground, runway or taxiway maybe, but not at altitude. Stewardess standing behind them with a flashlight? It all depends on how exact you want to believe their description is compared to what actually happened. It can be a lot easier to find an explanation if you assume that their description is only sort of accurate, not perfectly accurate. I like to give people the benefit of doubt if I can, but sometimes it's very hard.

 

[Easy Muffin]

You'd have to be incredibly accurate in order to even consistently hit a cruising plane with a laser pointer, let alone move it so precisely that the beam wanders across the few feet's worth of target that the cockpit window presents so as to appear like a moving light source. And that's assuming the beam remains tightly focussed over long distances.
Usually a person on the ground will only succeed in painting the aircraft intermittently so from the pilots' point of view it will appear like a randomly blinking light on the ground.

It can be a lot easier to find an explanation if you assume that their description is only sort of accurate, not perfectly accurate. I like to give people the benefit of doubt if I can, but sometimes it's very hard.

The pilots themselves suggest it might be another plane 60 to 80 miles ahead, so yeah. That doesn't sound like a reasonable assumption if it literally went 'coast to coast' etc. But it does sound like what we've seen in numerous Starlink flare videos.