Plane Stopped in Midair

"As I was moving relatively slowly" quoting from your post, it sounds like
you were in your car driving. The APPARENT relative movement of an aircraft
being observed from a moving vehicle changes drastically if either the
aircraft or the car change relative headings. That could make it appear as
if the forward motion of the jet had stopped.
As for then "it continued climbing" is hard to explain. Perhaps you just
thought it had stopped climbing due to the apparent stoppage of any forward
movement.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
-

"DM" wrote in message
...
Yesterday I saw a cargo jet (a major air express company) come to what
seemed like a dead stop in midair as it was making its ascent. After about
20 - 30 seconds of hanging without dropping out of the sky, it continued
climbing and apparently did not crash. There's been nothing about it in
the local news but I've still been very concerned. Could someone here
explain how such a thing is possible?

Some details: the temperature was about 50 degrees F, the sky was mostly
clear, and the time was around 0645. I was traveling by car at about 40
MPH on a street that is parallel to a regular flight path. From this
street it's common to see 3 or 4 planes per minute either climbing or
descending; the airport is about a mile or two away from this particular
street.

As I was moving relatively slowly compared to the how fast the jet should
have been moving, I noticed that I was gaining on it. I quickly eyeballed
the area for tall buildings and other geographical reference points so I
could be sure that I had a good perspective and wasn't just "seeing
things". The object was either not moving or it was moving *very* slowly,
and it was not a helicopter. For a few seconds I was stopped at an
intersection looking at this hanging plane and at the people in the other
cars around me. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to it
besides me.

The main reason this bothered me so much is because had the plane fallen,
it would have landed less than a half mile from where I and about 30 other
running cars were, in addition to several warehouse-type buildings and
auto repair garages, plus a 6 or 8 lane freeway filled with morning
traffic. Since the plane had just taken off and was probably full of fuel,
and was still low enough for its markings to be readable from the ground,
the crash probably would have been extraordinarily disastrous.

I've done a lot of Googling to try to get an understanding of what I saw
and really haven't learned anything meaningful. I'm hoping someone here
can explain how a "regular" jet--versus a specialized military jet--can
apparently stop in midair and not drop from the sky. As a daily traveler
near a major metro airport, I'd really like to be reassured that this is
not a common occurrence.

Debbie

Darrell S wrote:

"As I was moving relatively slowly" quoting from your post, it sounds like
you were in your car driving. The APPARENT relative movement of an aircraft
being observed from a moving vehicle changes drastically if either the
aircraft or the car change relative headings. That could make it appear as
if the forward motion of the jet had stopped.
As for then "it continued climbing" is hard to explain. Perhaps you just
thought it had stopped climbing due to the apparent stoppage of any forward
movement.

yes, I was paying particular attention to how high it was, for obvious
reasons. When I fixed on its altitude relative to buildings, power
poles, the freeway, etc., for a few seconds the altitude didn't seem to
be changing. And for a few seconds my car wasn't moving at all and it
didn't seem to be moving either, or if it was it was going slower that
you'd expect a plane in takeoff to be moving. Then suddenly did it start
moving forward and up. It was just like a helicopter, except it wasn't a
helicopter.

Debbie

DM wrote:

snipped

thank you to everyone who replied. I've been considering all the
explanations offered and appreciate the information. I'm pretty close to
accepting the "optical illusion" idea but am not quite there yet. I was
looking hard at that plane because I really didn't want to believe what
I was seeing. If it weren't for the fact that I could read the name of
the carrier on the plane, I'd probably be going for a UFO explanation!

Fly safe everybody.

Debbie

"DM" wrote in message
...
thank you to everyone who replied. I've been considering all the
explanations offered and appreciate the information. I'm pretty close to
accepting the "optical illusion" idea but am not quite there yet.

Airliners simply don't stop in midair. You have no choice but to accept the
"optical illusion" idea.

[...]
Fly safe everybody.

We do. Now, since you brought it up, how about you quit panicking every
time you see an airplane go overhead doing something other than what you
think it ought to be doing. We're not the dangerous boogey man that you,
the general public, apparently think we are. Tell your friends.

Thanks.

Pete

"Peter Duniho" wrote in message
...

We do. Now, since you brought it up, how about you quit panicking every
time you see an airplane go overhead doing something other than what you
think it ought to be doing. We're not the dangerous boogey man that you,
the general public, apparently think we are. Tell your friends.


Methinks the man doth protest too much.

-cwk.

"C Kingsbury" wrote in message
link.net...
Methinks the man doth protest too much.

Are you saying that we ARE the dangerous boogey man that the general public
thinks we are? Why on earth would you say such a thing?

That's probably right. An optical illusion. One night in the late 1950s I
was flying back from Las Vegas to Laredo in a T-33. We were around 30,000'.
I was in the front seat and saw a saucer shaped red/orange object way out at
11 o'clock coming straight at me. (around this time there had been numerous
flying saucer reports in Texas). I pointed it out to the pilot in the back
seat and we both became alarmed. It maintained shape and increased in size,
indicating it was moving right towards us.

Just before I might have taken evasive action the "saucer" lost its disk
shape and we could see it was the moon rising between cloud layers. Since
we were looking through lots of atmosphere horizontally, it had a red/orange
color. When it first rose above the lower cloud level it was a small disk.
As it continued to rise we saw more of the moon, still in the disk shape
which produce the illusion it was moving straight towards us. Once more
than half the moon was above the cloud layer we could see it wasn't a disk
at all but the top of a round moon rising.

--

Darrell R. Schmidt
B-58 Hustler History: http://members.cox.net/dschmidt1/
-

"DM" wrote in message
...
DM wrote:

snipped

thank you to everyone who replied. I've been considering all the
explanations offered and appreciate the information. I'm pretty close to
accepting the "optical illusion" idea but am not quite there yet. I was
looking hard at that plane because I really didn't want to believe what I
was seeing. If it weren't for the fact that I could read the name of the
carrier on the plane, I'd probably be going for a UFO explanation!

Fly safe everybody.

Debbie

"DM" wrote in message
...
Yesterday I saw a cargo jet (a major air express company) come to what
seemed like a dead stop in midair as it was making its ascent. After
about 20 - 30 seconds of hanging without dropping out of the sky, it
continued climbing and apparently did not crash.

As others have said, it's just an optical illusion, unless the wind picked
up suddenly to bring the aircraft's ground speed to zero (unlikely).

At Raleigh-Durham International, there used to be a road that paralleled one
of the main runways. A couple of times, I just happened to be on that road
at the end where a large commercial jet (B737or similar) was just starting
its takeoff roll. I floored the car and left the jet behind. About the time
I got to the speed of around 70 mph, that jet blew past me about midway down
the runway going so much faster it was hard to believe. It brought home the
fact that those jets are moving very fast when they look like they are going
the slowest.

-Trent
PP-ASEL

Its called parallax. Your motion, the motion of the plane, and the
background were in the right configuration so that the parallax made the
plane appear to be stationary when in fact it was not...


"DM" wrote in message
...
Yesterday I saw a cargo jet (a major air express company) come to what
seemed like a dead stop in midair as it was making its ascent. After
about 20 - 30 seconds of hanging without dropping out of the sky, it
continued climbing and apparently did not crash. There's been nothing
about it in the local news but I've still been very concerned. Could
someone here explain how such a thing is possible?

Some details: the temperature was about 50 degrees F, the sky was mostly
clear, and the time was around 0645. I was traveling by car at about 40
MPH on a street that is parallel to a regular flight path. From this
street it's common to see 3 or 4 planes per minute either climbing or
descending; the airport is about a mile or two away from this particular
street.

As I was moving relatively slowly compared to the how fast the jet
should have been moving, I noticed that I was gaining on it. I quickly
eyeballed the area for tall buildings and other geographical reference
points so I could be sure that I had a good perspective and wasn't just
"seeing things". The object was either not moving or it was moving
*very* slowly, and it was not a helicopter. For a few seconds I was
stopped at an intersection looking at this hanging plane and at the
people in the other cars around me. No one else seemed to be paying any
attention to it besides me.

The main reason this bothered me so much is because had the plane
fallen, it would have landed less than a half mile from where I and
about 30 other running cars were, in addition to several warehouse-type
buildings and auto repair garages, plus a 6 or 8 lane freeway filled
with morning traffic. Since the plane had just taken off and was
probably full of fuel, and was still low enough for its markings to be
readable from the ground, the crash probably would have been
extraordinarily disastrous.

I've done a lot of Googling to try to get an understanding of what I saw
and really haven't learned anything meaningful. I'm hoping someone here
can explain how a "regular" jet--versus a specialized military jet--can
apparently stop in midair and not drop from the sky. As a daily traveler
near a major metro airport, I'd really like to be reassured that this is
not a common occurrence.

Debbie

Dean Wilkinson wrote:

Its called parallax. Your motion, the motion of the plane, and the
background were in the right configuration so that the parallax made the
plane appear to be stationary when in fact it was not...



okay! This is clicking for me, even though I know it may just be another
way of saying "optical illusion". I read this page,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax

and the concept makes sense to me (not to imply that most everyone
else's explanation didn't).

Debbie