The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

Last night (Wednesday 24 July) about 11:32pm I saw a jetliner pass low over the St. John's area in midtown with absolutely no lights.
Looking like he was on an approach but heading SSE and nothing showed up on FlightRadar24.
My guess is military training flight or in-flight emergency from loss of electric power.

How low?  Could you count the rivets?   ;D

I take a few flights a year in/out of TUL and I've noticed coming back late at night that there is a radically different flight path that often goes lower over more of town vs the typical daytime routes. Not sure why that is and it seems kinda backwards to what you would expect.

Was it Southwest? I saw where they recently had a flight going in to land in Tampa and at four miles out in rain and overcast, the flight was 150 feet above the bridge between Tampa and St Pete.

https://youtu.be/sZsQOvOL9zY?si=RVUyW9l6zJz_Imxp   (https://youtu.be/sZsQOvOL9zY?si=RVUyW9l6zJz_Imxp)

It was passenger-jet sized, but illuminated only by light from the ground and possibly the rising moon. No strobes, no nuthin.

Here's a list of all the arrivals and departures  for TIA on 07/24/26. It shows multiple flights at one times but those are just flights that connected to the flight to Tulsa or possible connections that the departing flight connects to.

Arrivals
 https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-tracker/arrivals/TUL/?year=2024&month=7&date=26&hour=18  (https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-tracker/arrivals/TUL/?year=2024&month=7&date=26&hour=18)

Departures
 https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-tracker/departures/TUL/?year=2024&month=7&date=26&hour=18  (https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight-tracker/departures/TUL/?year=2024&month=7&date=26&hour=18)

Thanks, but I didnt see anything that would stand out as "Oh BTW, I dont have any lights" or an emergency situation.  Im leaning more towards a training flight or possibly something on a weird approach to Riverside.

EDIT:  At 23:32:50 I have good audio of the jet (which from my perspective in midtown puts it somewhere between the river and Utica) but nothing visible on infrared where it should have appeared in the sky. Unless their IR collision lights are out of the bandwidth of your average home security camera, I cant rule out a jet with an electrical problem.
FWIW there was a single-engine craft that proceeded it at 23:28:30 on roughly the same course, towards Riverside. It did show up on IR.

Gulfstream jets are the biggest that usually go into Riverside.

The airport in North Bend OR gets one in and out flight a day to San Francisco and United flys the Embraer 175 there.

The runway is about 700 feet shorter than Riverside at 4470 feet versus 5100 feet so I think the ER 175 would be about the biggest you could get away with.

The long runway at North Bend is 5980 ft.   I expect they are flying the ER 175 at less than maximum take off weight.  Looks like the ER 175 wants ~7300 ft of runway at Maximum Take Off Weight (and a few other things).

The weight capabilities of the runways at North Bend are a lot more than at Riverside.  I believe the weight restrictions may even impact the Gulfstreams at RVS.

http://www.airnav.com/airport/KOTH
https://www.airnav.com/airport/KRVS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_family

The largest plane I know of that landed at RVS was a Boeing 727 which was donated to Tulsa Tech.  It arrived at RVS almost empty.  I was told that it could also have gotten out of RVS if it was really light.

Just another thought.... scheduled airlines require MUCH GREATER SECURITY than GA reliever airports like RVS.  I'd rather keep RVS like it is with no scheduled airlines.  Plus, the airlines wouldn't put up with all the student traffic (not only Spartan) at RVS.

I see where my mistake was, I didn't read fully down the description for North Bend. It's always been a regional commercial airport and has TSA operations since they were required. It's had an up and down life with commercial flights, up until the late '00s they had flights to and from SFO and PDX, with SFO being United and PDX was Alaska Air. For a while there were flights between OTH and DIA during the summer months.

They used to fly a lot of EMB 120's but that changed to the CRJ 100 and the ERJ 175 depending on the time of the year. They aren't full flights, but they do get enough passengers, a good portion of them are golfers that fly in to go play at Bandon Dunes just south of the area.

It's the only airport where I've had a flight delayed for landing or take off because of an outbound USCG helicopter, they get a priority over anything else.

...but how many of those take of or land over a populated area without any aircraft lighting?

As a guess, and unless Jim Inhofe has risen from the grave, legally and safety wise I would say no pilot under normal circumstances would do that. If there was an emergency/system failure I could see it, but otherwise I would think not.