Ice stars almost rush into passenger aircraft

Pilots on a Chilean passenger plane yesterday saw the burning debris gliding over and only moving 40 seconds to stab them. It happens when the plane is approaching the airport in Auckland (New Zealand). NASA thinks it's a meteor.

An Airbus A340 from LAN.(Photo: Airliners.net)

The flight crew chief " saw bright flares a few kilometers away ". The Airbus A340 of LAN has just entered the New Zealand airspace, the fragments are burning through. The pilots said their planes almost touched them, because they could hear the sound of debris right on the airplane engine. It is estimated that only 40 seconds will go into the Airbus. The plane landed safely and continued on to the final destination of Sydney (Australia) a moment later.

Initially, the New Zealand press said that this was a piece from a Russian satellite. Russian officials have informed New Zealand air traffic control officials that a spaceship will fall to the Pacific yesterday. But the pilots saw debris 12 hours ahead of the Russian time.

Nicholas Johnson, an expert on space waste at the US space agency NASA, said he checked with the Russian side and their spacecraft - tasked with supplying the International Space Station - back Earth again 12 hours after Chilean pilots encountered the above phenomenon. There were also no debris other than the atmosphere invasion space at that time. So what the pilots see might be a meteor.

MC