American Airlines flight 1997 from Philadelphia to Los Angeles was nearing the end of an uneventful journey on Sunday when pilots reported seeing someone wearing a jetpack, flying roughly level to their aircraft and just a few hundred yards away. 

The Airbus A321 passenger jet was coming in to land at LAX when the pilots saw the rogue aeronaut, to the south of the approach path in LA's South Gate neighborhood, FOX 11 LA initially reported. 

"Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack," the American Airlines pilot told Los Angeles approach controllers when the aircraft was about 3,000 feet high, according to Live ATC recordings and Flightradar24 data. The pilot estimated the jetpacker was flying at roughly the plane's altitude, about 300 yards away. 

Full story here.

Not only are jetpacks a thing, but they’re enough of a thing where planes just casually mention them to aircraft control. I was expecting a little more shock. I was expecting a little more awe. I was expecting at least an exclamation point! “Hey, nice day huh. Oh yeah by the way there’s a jetpack off the starboard wing.” Dude’s just mentioning this like he forgot to turn off the bathroom light. 

Also, it’s not like this is a jetpack built in Bubba’s backyard that everyone in a while gets to the treeline and then blows up. This thing was 3,000 ft in the air. It was the same heigh as the airplane. For reference, the Empire State building is just under 1500 ft tall, the Sears Tower (fuck the Willis Tower, never heard of it) is just over 1700 ft tall. This guy was a speck in the sky.

Do we have this technology? I didn’t think the government even had it, which of course makes it even more shocking that there’s just some random dude who lives near LAX who every once in a while pops his head into the jet stream. Now I can’t stop thinking about the 1991 classic The Rocketeer and I need to know more about everything in this story. Who is this person? Where did they get the jetpack? Why in god’s name would you fly a jetpack next to an airport? That’s incredibly risky- which, I know, sounds funny when we’re talking about flying a jetpack at 3,000 ft. But if you get in an airplane’s path you’re just fucked, right? This isn’t avoiding a deer in your Subaru. This is avoiding a chipmunk in your seventh episode of Ice Road Truckers.

I can’t tell you what goes through the head of someone who does this. In fact, I can’t even relate to it in the slightest. I’ve known I’m a coward for a long time, but I’m just now learning that jetpacks are real, and the people who fly them are real. So you could say I’m reeling. I’m over here sweating bullets even looking at my 46th floor balcony, and they’re casually popping up to cruising altitude. Some people are just built different.