HOUSTON, May 27 (UPI) -- The FAA suspects it was a hobbyist's model rocket that went sailing past the cockpit of an airliner near a Houston airport.
The FBI's anti-terrorism unit has joined the investigation into the Monday incident reported by the pilot of a Continental Airlines flight that reached Cleveland without any further problems.
"We don't know for sure what the object was. But we think it might be somebody doing model rocketing," FAA spokesman Roland Herwig told the Houston Chronicle. "The pilot saw the rocket and some people saw the rocket's (smoke) trail."
Investigators will be checking radar data to see how close the rocket came to the plane.
A representative from an amateur rocketry club in Houston told the Chronicle that some model rockets can reach altitudes of 30,000 to 40,000 feet, although the Continental flight had just taken off from George Bush Intercontinental Airport and was likely not flying that high.
