Pilot spots its smoke trail at 6,000 feet.

Pilot Reports 'Missile' Fired at Jetliner Near LAX (11/28/05)

FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines plane taking off from Los Angeles International Airport.
Sources tell ABC News the pilot of American Airlines Flight 621, en route to Chicago, radioed air traffic controllers after takeoff from LAX. He told them a missile had been fired at the aircraft and missed.

The plane was over water when the pilot said he saw a smoke trail pass by the cockpit.

FBI agents believe it was a flare or a bottle rocket, but say they may never know if that's what it actually was.

That smoke trail rules out any iridium variety of flare. A high-powered aerial parachute flare reaches an altitude of 1,000 feet. Orion's 25mm red aerial flare reaches 375 feet; its 12-Gauge alerter 300 feet. Bottle rockets' apogees are even less. Fortunately for Flight 621's passengers and crew, no one afterwards needed to investigate a spontaneous combustion of the plane's center wing tank.

Mover Mike, Northeast Intelligence Network, and Daily Pundit have more.

	3:38 AM

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