A kite seems to have hit a passenger plane when it flew near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Saturday afternoon, United Airlines said.
The airline said it was aware of the reports that a kite reached United Flight 654, and that Houston’s flight landed safely.
“The clients normally defined,” he said, “and there was no damage to the plane.”
The Washington Airport Authority Department of Washington, which Patrol Reagan National and Dulles International Airport, said a kite was “briefly confiscated” by someone in Point Gravely because it flew in a restricted airspace.
“The kitchen flight is prohibited in Gravelly Point due to the landing of low flight aircraft in DCA,” the department said in a statement.
Jamie Larounis, a travel analyst, said he was in Grangelly Point on Saturday with a friend and another hundreds of others to enjoy one of the first warm spring weekend when he saw the kite hit a plane and called the airport police.
He said that 10 or more comets flew from the space of the park north of the main track of Reagan National, while the airplanes descended to land from the north.
For unknown reasons, Larounis said: “A kite became progressively higher.”
He said that United’s flight approaching and saw that he hit the kite between an engine and the fuselage.
The kite divered, he said, but briefly returned in the air before he saw on the floor with a family, his tangled rope and in a ball.
The airport police arrived with emergency lights and activated sirens, and the officers began to interview the family, two adults and a child, while taking possession of the comet, Larunis said.
“That kite was returned to its owner a little later and there were no charges,” said Emily McGee, spokesman for the airport police department.
She said in the statement that the officers warned some of the park attendees that Comet’s flight is prohibited in Grangelly Point.
Gravelly Point, part of George Washington Memorial Parkway, is under the scope of the National Parks Service. It is on the other side of the Potomac River from the National Mall, where the Blossom Kite festival, part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrating spring, took place on Saturday, the airport police said.
A festival spokesman said he was not connected to the activity in Gravelly Point.
United Flight 654 left his door at the intercontinental airport of George Bush in Houston at 11:59 am and reached his national door Reagan at 4:17 pm, about 19 delayed minutes, according to the Flightter Flighttare flight tracker.
Federal regulations prohibit the comet from flying near an airport, and the prohibition of flying the more than 500 feet. If a special permit is delivered, a notice must be issued to the pilots, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. No such flight notices were found in the agency’s database for Saturday in the Reagan National area.
The incident took place as a handful of aviation and almost false accidents this year, including the collision of a passenger plane from American Airlines and a Blackhawk helicopter from the US army. UU. Near Reagan National on January 29, which killed the 67 people on both planes.
Jay Blackman and Michelle Acevedo contributed.
