Commercial passenger aircraft stops moving while flying over Greenland and remains stationary in mid-air for thirteen minutes

[jose v]

Commercial passenger aircraft stops moving while flying over Greenland and remains stationary in mid-air for thirteen minutes - no explanation (YouTube video - 3½ mins)
On Thursday 22nd January 2009, US Airways Flight 307 departed from Frankfurt (Germany) en route for Charlotte, North Carolina (USA). While passing over Greenland, the passengers and crew witnessed a strange anomaly outside the aircraft. At 02:26 GMT the aircraft stopped moving in mid-air and hung suspended in a stationary position for thirteen minutes before resuming its course. US Airways has declined to comment on the incident. No explanation for the phenomenon has been given.

[chicketychina]

to me it looked like the plane was immobile because the kid goes back and forth between the window and the cabin. If you go back and watch it, the time that it takes for him to go back to the window from the cabin the same features of land are in the exact same position. Plus when he looked down the ground should have seemed to move beneath them. Watch it again and tell me if you see it too.

[Andy (UK)]

I think all these people that carry a video cam need to buy tripods, the hand shaking is terrible, to me a vid that zooms in and out and shakes a lot is a fake, better proof needed I'm afraid, this one I guess is another bad fake

[iDom]

ROFL

Either that kid is a first time flyer or he's got a wicked sense of humor (probably even both).

But the palm definitely goes to RE-posting that. Haha! omg! A plane remained stationary mid-air for thirteen minutes?!! WHOAAAAAAAAAAA…

ROFL — bis.

With the amount of such juicy documents here, SoE has become the paranormal tabloid even yesterday's fish'n'chips would run away from — preferring to crash on the sidewalk —, rather than be wrapped in it.

[Ullan]

Can't tell anything in this video. As is sadly often the case, when recording supposed 'phenomena', the camera wielder finds the need to frenetically zoom in and out, pan in all directions and never focus on a single wide angle shot for more than a split second.

In terms of referencing, this means it becomes impossible to deduce relative speed, momentum and course. When flying over a large expanse of virtually featureless terrain (such as Greenland) it becomes easy to lose sense of focus and direction, since there is no landmark our senses can use as reference point. If the craft is at high altitude but with no cloud cover and flying over what is for all intents and purposes a featureless, frozen desert, it may seem to 'stop' in mid air, even though its air and ground speed remain unchanged. Only when features resume (and thus distance has been traveled) are most people able to regain a sense of speed and motion.

But as I said, impossible to tell with this camera work.

This is an appeal to all chroniclers of phenomena which may be inexplicable: take a wide angle shot with a stationary reference point for several minutes, zoom in once to catch only pertinent detail and for the love of all that is Love, do try to hold the camera steady.

[Andy (UK)]

looked like it was moving to me?