Near hit with an unidentified object at 41000ft in eastern US.
I am a commercial pilot for a private company in Canada. We were operating a Cessna Citation Sovereign (C680) twin-engine, 9 passenger corporate jet.
We were enroute from White Plains New York to our home base in Atlantic Canada at a cruising altitude of 41000ft and a speed of mach 0.78, our groundspeed at the time was approx 500kts.
At the time of the encounter we crusing well above an overcast layer in sunny skies, in the Portsmouth, NH to Portland ME area. At approx 2210GMT a whitish coloured object at what seemed to be less than 1000ft vertical separation passed closely by the right side of our aircraft at an extremely high rate of speed, faster than I’ve ever passed any other aircraft in the past.
Nothing was displayed on our TCAS (traffic, collision and avoidance system). We question air traffic control (Boston ATC) if he had any other opposite direction traffic. There were none, however he said there was a primary radar target at our six o’clock position and 8 miles.
We filed an official report through the air traffic controller, and he said another aircraft reported the same sighting.
I have doubts it was another aircraft or UAV because of the extremely high rate of speed that it went by us, so fast it was impossible to even identify the shape.
This is the first time in my 22 years of professional flying that I have ever witness something like this.
I am a commercial pilot for a private company in Canada. We were operating a Cessna Citation Sovereign (C680) twin-engine, 9 passenger corporate jet.
We were enroute from White Plains New York to our home base in Atlantic Canada at a cruising altitude of 41000ft and a speed of mach 0.78, our groundspeed at the time was approx 500kts.
At the time of the encounter we crusing well above an overcast layer in sunny skies, in the Portsmouth, NH to Portland ME area. At approx 2210GMT a whitish coloured object at what seemed to be less than 1000ft vertical separation passed closely by the right side of our aircraft at an extremely high rate of speed, faster than I’ve ever passed any other aircraft in the past.
Nothing was displayed on our TCAS (traffic, collision and avoidance system). We question air traffic control (Boston ATC) if he had any other opposite direction traffic. There were none, however he said there was a primary radar target at our six o’clock position and 8 miles.
We filed an official report through the air traffic controller, and he said another aircraft reported the same sighting.
I have doubts it was another aircraft or UAV because of the extremely high rate of speed that it went by us, so fast it was impossible to even identify the shape.
This is the first time in my 22 years of professional flying that I have ever witness something like this.
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Portsmouth area
USA
5 sec
5 sec
unknown
NH
Occurred : 5/15/2011 22:10 (Entered as : 05/15/2011 22:10) Reported: 5/16/2011 9:14:49 AM 09:14 Posted: 5/29/2011 Location: Portsmouth area, NH Shape: Unknown Duration: 5 sec
Near hit with an unidentified object at 41000ft in eastern US. ((NUFORC Note: Report from commercial pilot. PD))