bright elongated object sighted from airliner over central Illinois in blue midday sky at much higher altitude than 31,000 ft.
While ona flight from St. Louis, MO to Cleveland, OH on Tues., Aug.1, after about 30 min into flight over central Illinois I was looking out the left window (north) of our Embraer 55 plane and observed what I initially thought was a another airplane flying parallel to our flight and above us...I had to look up at about a 30-40 deg angle. The object was a very bright white slash of light about the length of arc that a dime would subtend at arms length. What caused me to be very surprised at the sighting was that I could detect no wings or tail assembly. It was totally cloudless blue sky and no contrail was observed from this "object". Just after noticing this the pilot came on and announced that we had leveled out at our cruising altitude of 31,000 ft. This meant that the object was considerably above us in altitude and if at 5 miles distance would likely have been at well over 40,000 ft - and unusual altitude for a commercial flight in good weather. In any event, the object paralleled our course for about 2 mins and then appeared to receed to the north without ever changing the aspect ratio of its profile....thus it changed direction without appearing to turn as does an airplane. I was able to follow this bright light until it completely receeded from sight about 2 mins later.
While ona flight from St. Louis, MO to Cleveland, OH on Tues., Aug.1, after about 30 min into flight over central Illinois I was looking out the left window (north) of our Embraer 55 plane and observed what I initially thought was a another airplane flying parallel to our flight and above us...I had to look up at about a 30-40 deg angle. The object was a very bright white slash of light about the length of arc that a dime would subtend at arms length. What caused me to be very surprised at the sighting was that I could detect no wings or tail assembly. It was totally cloudless blue sky and no contrail was observed from this "object". Just after noticing this the pilot came on and announced that we had leveled out at our cruising altitude of 31,000 ft. This meant that the object was considerably above us in altitude and if at 5 miles distance would likely have been at well over 40,000 ft - and unusual altitude for a commercial flight in good weather. In any event, the object paralleled our course for about 2 mins and then appeared to receed to the north without ever changing the aspect ratio of its profile....thus it changed direction without appearing to turn as does an airplane. I was able to follow this bright light until it completely receeded from sight about 2 mins later.
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Illinois
USA
approx. 4 min
approx. 4 min
cigar
IL
Occurred : 8/1/2006 13:30 (Entered as : 08/01/06 13:30) Reported: 8/4/2006 12:33:04 PM 12:33 Posted: 10/30/2006 Location: Illinois (central area; in-flight, 31,000 ft.), IL Shape: Cigar Duration: approx. 4 min Characteristics: There were aircraft in the vicinity or aircraft chasing the object
bright elongated object sighted from airliner over central Illinois in blue midday sky at much higher altitude than 31,000 ft.