Strange Happenings During a Commercial Flight

I flew from Los Angeles to Hong Kong last Friday night and while being way out over the Pacific Ocean about half way between Alaska and Japan another commercial jet rolled up beside us and flew in formation about two miles off of our starboard side.

A few minutes later, it gently started to converge on us while climbing to about 600 feet above our flight level. It then slowly passed over us at about a 45 degree angle ahead of our aircraft.

FWIW, I was on Cathay Airlines flight CX881.

I can’t imagine this being routine (I know relatively little about commercial flight regulations and practices but I did learn to fly general aviation aircraft many decades ago when I was 17 and I know that when two aircraft closely cross each-others flight paths, the leading aircraft should be at a lower altitude so that the downward propagation of its wingtip vortices won’t strike the other aircraft).

Anyway, I suspect that the other aircraft was having mechanical issues (hydraulic fluid leak, fuel leak, indication that the landing gears weren't fully retracted, engine problems, etc.) and did the pass over so that our pilots could make a visual inspection of their aircraft.

I fly commercial almost every week…the 600 foot separation is a generous estimation, probably more like 500 feet…I don’t mind admitting that I had significant pucker factor going on especially once the other aircraft disappeared from my view out the window.

I’d be very interested to hear what others think may have been happening.

Visual inspection from more than 1.5 football fields away, at night?  

UFO

AngeryCorvair,

Agreed but what other explanation better fits the observed events.

SVreX,

Undewear F’ing Obsolete; Correct!

It was probably still >5 miles horizontally and 1000 ft vertically from you.  It's sometimes hard to judge distances in the air. A big jet far away can look like a smaller one that's closer. I once told ATC that I had a C-141 Starlifter in sight ahead of us at 5 miles. ATC replied that it was a C-5 Galaxy (similar-looking but much bigger) at 10 miles!

Hi BenB,

Welcome aboard!

I totally appreciate your point…my graduate studies were in Human Factors Engineering which includes the field of Sensory and Perception where our four means of judging distance are quantified (parallax, granularity, scale, and superposition)…I took it as a given that I was looking at a max sized aircraft (Triple Seven, Airbus 300+, Galaxy, etc.) due to our being way out in the middle of the Pacific at the time.

Please appreciate that I had the benefit of relative movement resulting from the aircraft closing in on us both horizontally and vertically but ultimately, you’re right, it was dark so within limits, I pretty much only had the red on left / green on right visual angle to form a mental image of what was happening.

In a broader sense however, there’s no question that our two aircraft were performing some type of coordinated maneuver…it pulled up, stabilized, closed in, and hoped over us…something was clearly going on between us.

Any chance it was some sort of, oh let's say Russian patrol aircraft?

I remember one time I was on a flight that stopped in some busy US airport, don't remember which one now...on the way in many planes passed close enough to see and hear them!

RX Reven' said:

Hi BenB,

Welcome aboard!

I totally appreciate your point…my graduate studies were in Human Factors Engineering which includes the field of Sensory and Perception where our four means of judging distance are quantified (parallax, granularity, scale, and superposition)…I took it as a given that I was looking at a max sized aircraft (Triple Seven, Airbus 300+, Galaxy, etc.) due to our being way out in the middle of the Pacific at the time.

Please appreciate that I had the benefit of relative movement resulting from the aircraft closing in on us both horizontally and vertically but ultimately, you’re right, it was dark so within limits, I pretty much only had the red on left / green on right visual angle to form a mental image of what was happening.

In a broader sense however, there’s no question that our two aircraft were performing some type of coordinated maneuver…it pulled up, stabilized, closed in, and hoped over us…something was clearly going on between us.

Yes, in the dark, it's even harder to judge the distance! I was always amazed at how air traffic controllers could keep everyone climbing, descending, and turning around each other without anyone trying to share the same airspace. It was always fun to have someone pass in the opposite direction, only 1000 above or below you. That C-5 I mentioned looked pretty cool from 1000 ft above. I've been out of aviation for almost 15 years and I still miss that stuff. 

Flyer talk.com is a large forum with lots of insiders , 

Might be interesting to post there.

I would guess some sort of military.  FlightAware is supposed to allow tracking past flights up to 7 days.  What was your flight number and date, maybe we (or you) can look it up and see what else was around.  I don't know if you can set it to show other flight though.  I think there is a way to do that somewhere, but I am not sure where.

It somewhat reminds me of a story my step dad told me about when he was in the navy (fighter pilot).  When based in the Los Angeles area (carrier air group), they would use flights coming out of LAX for gun run practice.  I am sure this happened day and night (radar intercept practice).  You can imagine what a fighter at full power passing by very close looks like from a passenger plan window... kind of explains a lot of the UFO claims back in the day.

Could have been a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane (those are many time based on commercial airframes), US plane practicing etc.

SVreX said:

UFO

Swamp gas.

In reply to aircooled :

Based on data in the original post I estimated Cathay Pacific CX811 on May 10. Unfortunately I ran into the 7 day cutoff, but that flight appears two have two zones with no coverage - over the Bering Sea and further south

It was a weather balloon.

Don't worry until you see a little green guy out on the wing, tearing off bits of the wing.

I onced spotted a Southwest flight heading the opposite direction out of Phoenix, maybe somewhere closer to New Mexico. It was probably miles away, but it seemed like thousands of feet, at most. 

Considering both aircraft were travelling over 500mph, it was surprisingly a slow pass. 

Were you in first class with free booze? 

aircooled said:

I would guess some sort of military.  FlightAware is supposed to allow tracking past flights up to 7 days.  What was your flight number and date, maybe we (or you) can look it up and see what else was around.  I don't know if you can set it to show other flight though.  I think there is a way to do that somewhere, but I am not sure where.

It somewhat reminds me of a story my step dad told me about when he was in the navy (fighter pilot).  When based in the Los Angeles area (carrier air group), they would use flights coming out of LAX for gun run practice.  I am sure this happened day and night (radar intercept practice).  You can imagine what a fighter at full power passing by very close looks like from a passenger plan window... kind of explains a lot of the UFO claims back in the day.

Could have been a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane (those are many time based on commercial airframes), US plane practicing etc.

Cathay Flight CX881 departing LAX at 12:35 on Saturday, May 18th at 12:35 AM...we were about half way between the middle of the Aleutian Islands and Tokyo...South of the Bering Sea on a West by South West heading at 36,000 feet.

I can’t be of any help here, but I got stuck in the Minneapolis airpoirt for 6 hours en route to San Fran after our plane got struck by lightning. I don’t recommend it.

wish I could fly Cathay....  Too bad HKG is inside an ITAR restricted country..  no laptop for me if I go there.. 

I fly that cathay flight to HK every 3 weeks, and every 6 weeks I fly Delta flight to Haneda

in last 16 years, cant remember seeing anything like that 

those kind of happenings would spice it for me for sure 

glad you landed on the ground safely

Ethnic Food-Wrap Aficionado said:

SVreX said:

UFO

Swamp gas.

There was no mention of gator burritos being served on the flight...