High-Altitude Legend or High-Flying Illusion?
In late 2020, commercial aviation in Southern California witnessed one of the strangest sagas in modern airspace history. High above the bustling urban sprawl of Los Angeles and directly in the approach paths of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), one of the world’s busiest airports, commercial flight crews began reporting sightings that sounded straight out of a comic book. Airline pilots flying at thousands of feet were radioing air traffic control to report a human figure flying alongside them in what appeared to be a personal jetpack.
The phenomenon, quickly dubbed by global media as the “LAX Jetpack Man,” launched a multi-agency federal investigation involving the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), and local law enforcement. It captured the public imagination, ignited viral internet speculation, and sparked intense debate among aviation safety experts, drone engineers, and legal authorities regarding airspace security and high-altitude optical illusions.
A Timeline of Encounters
August 30, 2020: The First Sighting
The saga officially began on a clear Sunday afternoon. The flight crew of American Airlines Flight 1997, an Airbus A321 arriving from Philadelphia, was on its final approach to LAX at an altitude of approximately 3,000 feet, roughly 10 miles from the runway.
At 6:35 PM local time, the captain radioed the LAX air traffic control tower with an astonishing declaration:
American 1997: “Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack.”
LAX Tower: “American 1997, okay… were they off to your left side or right side?”
American 1997: “Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude.”
Uncertainty briefly filled the frequency until seconds later, a pilot aboard SkyWest Flight 2304 keyed their microphone to confirm the observation:
SkyWest 2304: “Tower, SkyWest 2304, we also saw the guy pass by us in the jetpack.”
LAX controllers immediately issued safety alerts to all incoming aircraft in the southern arrival sector: “Use caution, jetpack guy reported 300 yards south of the LAX final approach course.”
October 14, 2020: Escalation to 6,000 Feet
Six weeks later, the phenomenon returned, this time at an altitude that defied conventional physics for personal flight gear.
The flight crew of China Airlines Flight 006, a Boeing 777 freighter descending toward LAX, reported seeing a figure wearing what appeared to be a flight suit and jetpack at an altitude of 6,000 feet approximately 7 miles northwest of the airport, near the coast of West Los Angeles. The sheer height of this report shocked aviation experts, as reaching 6,000 feet in an open-air flight apparatus exposes a person to high winds, freezing temperatures, and extremely rapid fuel depletion.
December 2020: Visual Evidence Emerges
In late December 2020, concrete visual evidence of something mysterious in the sky above Southern California surfaced online. Flight instructors with the Sling Pilot Academy were conducting a routine training flight in a light aircraft off the coast of Palos Verdes, south of LAX.
At around 3,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, the instructor’s action camera captured clear video footage of an object cruising steadily through the air. The object featured a distinctly human-like silhouette, positioned upright, moving in a controlled straight line without any visible wings or aerodynamic control surfaces. While the video was not clear enough to definitively identify the object as a person, it confirmed that an unidentifiable, standing, human-shaped mass was indeed navigating local airspace.
July 28, 2021: “We Did Not See Iron Man”
After a brief lull, the encounters resumed in the summer of 2021. The pilot of a Boeing 747 cargo freighter radioed LAX Tower to report a sighting approximately 15 miles east of LAX at 5,000 feet:
Pilot: “Possible jetpack man in sight… about 5,000 feet.”
Air traffic controllers, having grown accustomed to the recurring mystery over the previous year, replied with light-hearted humour over the open channel:
LAX Tower: “Did you see the UFO?… We were looking, but we did not see Iron Man.”
June 2022: The Final Report
The last notable official report occurred in June 2022, when an incoming commuter flight reported a similar small, stationary object hanging in the sky near 4,500 feet over the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Following this report, the sightings abruptly ceased.
Law Enforcement, FBI, and FAA Official Reports
Because flying an unauthorized craft in controlled commercial airspace is a serious federal crime that threatens aircraft safety and passenger lives, law enforcement agencies mobilised rapidly.
FAA Mandatory Off-Site Reports (MORs) & Radar Audits
The Federal Aviation Administration initiated formal Mandatory Off-Site Reports (MORs) for every incident. FAA forensic analysts conducted deep reviews of primary and secondary radar data recorded by regional terminal radar approach control (TRACON) centres.
The Primary Finding: At no point during any of the reported sightings did radar systems detect a primary target or transponder signal corresponding to the reported locations.
The significance of this is that while small objects or non-metallic materials can sometimes evade radar, a human carrying a metal jetpack, turbine engines, and fuel tanks typically yields a small radar cross-section. The total absence of primary radar returns suggested the target was either composed of non-reflective materials (such as thin plastic or rubber) or was too small for radar identification.
FBI Federal Investigation & Manufacturer Audits
The FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office launched a formal investigation into potential interference with aircraft operation. FBI agents conducted detailed interviews with the commercial airline pilots who submitted the original reports.
During follow-up interviews, several pilots admitted that while their initial knee-jerk reaction out of the cockpit window was “jetpack,” the encounter lasted only 1 to 2 seconds as their jets moved at over 200 knots (230+ mph). The American Airlines pilot clarified that what he saw could easily have been a motionless mannequin, a heavy-lift multirotor drone, or an unusually shaped balloon.
FBI agents contacted regional jetpack pioneer companies, notably Southern California-based JetPack Aviation (creators of the JB-10 and JB-11 jetpacks). Investigators audited flight logs, GPS telemetry, fuel receipts, and equipment inventories. The investigation confirmed that all legitimate experimental jetpacks were accounted for, locked in hangars, and had not been flown anywhere near commercial flight corridors at the time of the recorded incidents.
LAPD Air Support Division Evidence
The Los Angeles Police Department’s Air Support Division (ASD) flew helicopter patrols to assist federal agencies. In November 2021, the LAPD released video recordings and flight log transcripts from a patrol helicopter flying off the coast near Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.
The high-definition camera rig on the LAPD helicopter spotted and zoomed in on a target drifting high above the urban area. The footage clearly showed a 6-foot-tall, life-sized Jack Skellington Halloween balloon filled with helium, floating passively through the sky with its legs dangling downward.
The LAPD and FBI cited this video as evidence of how high-altitude party decorations, specifically “Air Walker” style balloons designed to look like standing humans, can drift up to thousands of feet on thermal currents and present a convincing human profile to pilots passing by at high relative speeds.
Technical Considerations
Aviation experts and aeronautical engineers quickly identified scientific obstacles to the idea that a human was physically flying a jetpack over Los Angeles.
Fuel Consumption & Range: Modern personal jetpacks (such as those by Gravity Industries or JetPack Aviation) rely on micro-turbine jet engines burning Jet-A or kerosene. They require immense thrust to lift a human body vertically. Consequently, their maximum flight duration is roughly 5 to 10 minutes under ideal conditions.
Altitude Limits: Climbing from ground level to 3,000–6,000 feet consumes the vast majority of a jetpack’s fuel reserve just during the ascent. A pilot reaching 6,000 feet would run out of fuel within minutes, leaving them no margin to safely land or requiring them to deploy a recovery parachute in order to land safely.
Acoustic Signature: Jetpack micro-turbines produce extreme noise levels ranging between 115 and 120+ decibels at close range. An individual launching a jetpack anywhere in the Los Angeles basin would trigger thousands of noise complaints, ground-level eyewitness calls, and immediate viral social media footage. No ground-level launches were ever reported or filmed.
The Two Primary Theories
With a human-piloted jetpack ruled out by physics and law enforcement, federal agencies narrowed the explanation down to two viable theories:
High-Altitude Novelty Helium Balloons
The primary official theory accepted by the FBI and FAA is that pilots were observing large, human-shaped foil or latex helium balloons. Novelty manufacturers produce full-sized character balloons for Halloween and movie promotions. When released accidentally or intentionally, these sealed balloons can ride thermal updrafts into flight corridors between 3,000 and 6,000 feet.
To a pilot sitting in a cockpit traveling at 250 miles per hour, an upright, human-shaped object hanging motionlessly in the air for a brief fraction of a second creates an optical illusion of a person hovering in a suit.
Radio-Controlled Mannequin Drones
The alternative theory favoured by many aviation hobbyists involves custom heavy-lift multirotor drones. Modern drone enthusiasts regularly construct radio-controlled aircraft wrapped in lightweight foam or fiberglass mannequins shaped like superheroes or jetpack pilots.
A heavy-lift electric multirotor drone fitted with a dummy body could easily be launched silently from a backyard or park, climb to several thousand feet, hover near approach paths, and land quietly before authorities could respond. This would explain the upright posture recorded in the Sling Pilot Academy video while accounting for the lack of acoustic noise and radar presence.
The Unbroken Silence: A Modern Urban Phantom
Despite thousands of investigative hours, endless radar sweeps, and joint federal task forces, no human pilot was ever apprehended, no crashed hardware was ever recovered from the streets of Los Angeles, and no covert inventor ever stepped forward to claim credit. Officially, authorities closed the file by chalking the sightings up to wandering Jack Skellington balloons and phantom drones.
Yet, serious questions still linger. Can a simple novelty balloon truly fool seasoned commercial airline captains across multiple independent sightings over two full years? Or was someone, perhaps a rogue aerospace genius, a black-budget military tester, or a fearless thrill-seeker testing unsanctioned propulsion technology, quietly slipping into the congested skies above LAX, vanishing into the clouds before radar or authorities could react?
The sky over Southern California has fallen quiet for now, but the ghost in the machine remains untraced. The ultimate identity of the LAX Jetpack Man lives on: a real-life comic book mystery hanging silently at 6,000 feet, waiting for the moment it chooses to reappear.
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