At 1:52 pm, while filming the terrain, the technician observed a strange object flying to the left over the ocean. Soon both men observed it with the naked eye. They noticed that the velocity and the altitude of the object appeared to be about the same as the helicopter, and estimated that the object was approximately 35 to 40 miles (55-65 km) away. It was traveling W/NW, according to the Captain. The technician aimed the camera at the object immediately and zoomed in with the infra red (IR) for better clarity. Content from external source

Frequently Asked Questions

TWCobra said: The helicopter seems to have tried to call on 121.5. The are a couple of problems with that, Most aircraft don't set that frequency until some time after takeoff which can vary from airline to airline, and if they were listening, unless whoever was calling used their callsign, they wouldn't respond. Click to expand...

The helicopter video with timestamps and GPS coordinates. The IB6830 and LA330 ADS-B tracks with timestamps and GPS coordinates.

IB6830 is in the right place at the right place

IB6830 is going in the right direction

IB6830 banks when the "UFO" banks,

IB6830 would create a visual thermal signature the same size as in the video.

IB6830 engine configuration matches the flares seen in the banking



The size of IB6830's thermal signature shrinks proportional to its distance, matching the video.

Contrails derived from the IB6830's track would have the same apparent size as in the video.

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If you are short on time, then I made a one minute video explaining this:Background: Infrared footage from the Chilean Navy appears to show some kind of flying object that briefly leaves a trail behind it.This looks like a plane, flyingfrom the camera considerably higher than the helicopter (somewhere around 15,000 to 25,000 feet), that briefly creates an aerodynamic contrail.Based on analysis by @Trailblazer @Trailspotter , myself, and others, There were only two planes possibly involved: IB6830 and LA330. The plane thatseems to fit best is LA330, a two engined A320, which was reported to be climbing through 20,000 feet at that exact visual position at 14:01:39.While this seemed like a good fit just based on this overhead view, subsequent 3D analysis revealed that IB6830 (a four engined A340) is actually a perfect match. IB6830 left earlier, and was climbing out more to the south, nearer to the helicopter. At the time this was spotted (the very first sighting on the video, at 13:52:34) IB6830 was actually around 35 miles away. However it would very quickly get further away. By 13:57 IB6830 would be 65 miles away. This explain why it was not seen on radar (IB6830 was on radar, just not where they thought it was)Initially I had to extract the data for the track from Planefinder, but then I located the FlightAware GPS track. Using this, multiple other examples of IB6830's departure, and the official departure charts, I was able to create a track in google earth using actual GPS coordinates (blue) and estimated positions (orange).Since we have timestamped GPS locations, we can now geolocate IB6830 and LA330 in Google Earth, and create views of frames from the helicopter video using the coastline and mountains to get the exact heading.IB6830 is inWe can position both the planes and the chopper precisely with the GPS data, match the camera direction from the wide shot, and the position of IB6830 then matchesHere's a video showing how it matches up:The two large blobs are flared images from the heat of the engines (much smaller in reality). You can see this effect with some candles if you view them from a distance with an IR camera. I used the FLIR ONE to do this:(Here's a video of the above experiment We can see how large the flares look at various stages of the path.The flaring is more apparent if you look at it uninverted. The engines appear as two very bright lightsThe aerodynamic contrail starts ands stop in a similar way to the trail in this video (not a "chemtrail" though, this just a regular aerodynamic contrail)There are a few different relevant images from the video:This is a close-up of the object early in the video:This shows that the plane is banked at this point - i.e. it is turning to the right. This matches the part of the track for IB6830 where it turns to the north, based on the time.Compare it with this video of a plane taking off. It is much closer, however at the end of the video you see the two engines tilted at about the same angle as the "UFO" while the plane turns right.At one point (9:08) they switch between the IR camera and a regular (visible light) camera. you can see the trail qute distinctly. It looks very like a contrail.Why is it showing up as warmer? Aerodynamic contrails are essentially clouds, and at this altitude they will be ice clouds, below below freezing. They show up as darkly colored for the same reason that other clouds in the scene show up dark. It's simply the camera adjusting the exposure for the very cold sky. The engines are small so they don't effect the exposure much (and hence they flare). So the net result is that anything warmer than radiation coming from clear sky will appear dark.A few seconds laterIt also seems a bit odd that there is very little change in the heading and elevation angles in the video. This becomes clear if you look at the angles and distances involvedThe thin white lines here connect the chopper and the plane at equal times, as you can see the heading angle between them does not change much.The altitude of the plane varies from ~5000m to 9000m, while the distance varies from 70km to 170km, the chopper is about 1400m, we can draw a diagram to see the anglesAs you can see there is very little change from the start (2.93°) to the end (1.94). Basically it should vary from about 3° to about 2° (appearing to be descending faster at the start)[Note: this top post will be updated with information from the discussion below, so some of what follows may seem repetitive]References: IPACO Report ^ A: A pilot familiar with Santiago departure responds:They were looking for a low flying object south of the airport about 35 miles away, by the time they looked it was at a high altitude and 65 miles away. The plane actually does show up on radar in data supplied by CEFAAA: It's not as hot as the engines, it's a similar color in the IR to other clouds in the images. It's just a dense cloud which is a lot warmer than the far background sky. Even if they were dumping boiling water it would have been atomized by the 300 mph wind into a cloud and cooled to ambient temperature in seconds.A: That's where exhaust contrails are most frequent. However this appear to be a semi persistentcontrail which often form on climbing aircraft between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (and sometimes lower).There were only every two possible planes. LA330 looked better when simply viewing the tracks from above. But later 3D recreation showed that IB6830 (flying a similar path) was a better fit. LA330 still looked like a good fit for the final shot, but more detailed analysis of the path eventually showed it could only be IB6830A: I could argue I'm an expert too (at identifying planes and contrails), or that the CEFAA lacks expertise in some areas, or that even experts make mistakes. However let's drop that "Argument for authority", and look at facts you can verify yourself.We have some very solid verifiable evidence in1 matches 2 in every wayThis is not my theory. These are verifiable facts that I (and others) simply discovered. Unless there was a UFO flying between the plane and the helicopter, mimicking the motion, the banking, the size and and the thermal signature of the plane, then it's a plane.See also:uffington post update: