Someone's apparently been flying with a jet pack near Los Angeles Airport. Again.
It's not every day that a commercial pilot sees a man flying around with a jet pack near an airport, but as it turns out, it's not that rare, either.
Per the Los Angeles Times, LA International Airport officials are apparently investigating reports of someone wearing a jet pack in the flight path. On Wednesday, a China Airlines crew member said they saw a person in a jet pack some seven miles northwest of the airport, flying at about 6,500 feet.
Amazingly, this is the second time this has happened at LAX; in August, two commercial pilots said they saw a man in a jet pack flying near the airport.
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On that occasion, Mashable reached out to JetPack Aviation, a jet pack company located near LAX, but they told us it wasn't one of their jet packs. In fact, they said it maybe wasn't a real jet pack at all — perhaps a drone of some sort with a mannequin attached, which is somehow even more disturbing.
The FBI is also looking into this jet pack business.
"The FBI is in contact with the FAA and is investigating multiple reports of what, according to witnesses, appeared to be an individual in a jetpack near LAX, including one today reported by a China Airlines crew," the FBI Los Angeles Field Office spokeswoman Laura Eimiller told CNN on Wednesday.
Jet packs are pretty cool. But flying with a jet pack anywhere near any airport – let alone a massive one like LAX – is extremely dangerous and likely punishable by law. It's just not something you do. Let us be clear: If you own a jet pack, and plan to fly with it, please make sure you do it far away from airports, and after securing all applicable permits.
Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.
