Patrick D. McCaslin Interview, 25 February 2001
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| INT: | Jumping back a second—when it appeared first on your radar set could it have come from behind, or could it have dropped down, or could it have come up from below? | |
| PM: | Could not have come from behind. Well, what it did before I saw it on the radar, I have no idea. All I know is, that it was directly off our right wing when the first weak return appeared. | |
| INT: | Oh, it was there already. | |
| PM: | It appeared weak—the first scan, right off our right—3 miles off our right wing. | |
| INT: | And then 3 seconds later it was a full— | |
| PM: | It was a strong return, and stayed strong until it disappeared. | |
| INT: | What did they use to estimate the approach speed of that object? I mean they obviously came up with a very high rate of approach— | |
| PM: | Well, there was a point later where it closed on us. It closed from one scan to the next from 3 miles down to 1 mile during the descent. So I think that's where they estimated the closure speed. Not where it appeared. | |
| INT: | —had more data at that point? | |
| PM: | Yeah, you could tell that if the scan was 3 seconds and this thing moved from 3 miles to 1 mile in 3 seconds, then how much is that in miles per hour, you know, that kind of thing. I think that's what they did. At any rate, we're now in the descent and this thing's apparently descending with us. I advised the pilots of that. It seemed to me that the pilots were getting a lot more interested in it. There seemed to be a lot of talk on the intercom about, "Do you see it? I still don't see it," that kind of thing. It's clear now that whatever this is is staying with us, and that's cause for concern, since no one—I think there were calls to the tower about, "Do you have traffic," and, although I may not have heard those, I think there were calls to the tower about, "Do you have traffic?"—and no one was owning up to any traffic in the area. | |
| INT: | Would FAA have had it in their systems? | |
| PM: | Yeah, I mean, if there's anything out there—and I don't know if the tower checked with them. | |
| INT: | That would've been FAA Omaha? Or Minneapolis? |
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