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2010 California contrail incident
Aviation and aerial phenomenon-related incident / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On the evening of Monday, November 8, 2010, an unusually conspicuous contrail appeared about 35 miles west of Los Angeles, California in the vicinity of Catalina Island. News footage[lower-alpha 1] of the event from a KCBS helicopter led to intense media coverage and speculation about a potential military missile launch, with many reporters and experts discussing the contrail and theorizing about its source.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
![]() | This article may be excessively based on contemporary reporting. (March 2024) |
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Date | November 8, 2010 |
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Location | Airspace approximately 35 miles west of Los Angeles, California and north of Catalina Island |
Also known as | "Mystery missile" "Mystery contrail"[3] |
Type | Aviation-related incident |
Cause | Speculated to be a contrail from U.S. Airways flight 808[4] or an RIM-161 Standard Missile[5] |
Participants | Department of Defense Federal Aviation Administration KCBS |
Coverage continued for several days. The Pentagon released a statement on November 9 that it could not identify the source of the vapor trail,[12] but both the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command stated it was not a foreign military launch.[12] On November 9, the FAA also issued a statement that it had not approved any commercial space launches in the area for the prior day.[13] Eventually, on November 10, about 30 hours after the contrail first gained press attention, a Pentagon spokesman stated there was no evidence to suggest the plume was anything but an aircraft contrail.[6][14] Some experts, however, held that the vapor trail could not be identified as an aircraft contrail with total certainty, and others stated it was a missile.[6][5]
While some uncertainty over the contrail's origin persisted,[6] the incident came to be seen as an example of news outlets being "captives of their sources" and irresponsibly pushing unverified theses; it was also interpreted as a lesson in the importance of exploring alternative hypotheses that fit available data.[6] U.S. federal and military authorities were also criticized for giving a series of "inconclusive" answers about the event and allowing the issue, in the words of one commentator, to "fester for days" without a clear resolution.[6]