Wow!
At about 3,000 feet, apparently. 
Here’s audio in this brief news clip:
Found a local news article, too:
(ETA: shouldn’t that be him/her?)
First drones, now folks with jetpacks… this could be very disruptive! 
I find it very hard to believe that it’s possible to carry enough fuel to reach that kind of altitude and still get back down alive.
I want to lean the extreme cool it takes to respond with “Ok, thank you, what side were they on” and not “Did you just say a fucking jetpack?!”
Anyone know where Adam & Jamie were today?
Sounds like a **Mythbusters stunt.
Remember the lawn chair balloon?
**I know they ended the show. But, they did try building a jet pack. Total Fail
Frankie Zapata’s Flyboard can reportedly reach 10k feet. Not sure what Richard Browning’s suit’s ceiling is or JetPack Aviation’s is. Those are the 3 that I know about and occasionally seek updates on their status.
Not Mythbusters, but not a fail either.
This story showed up in my Facebook news feed this morning. I honestly thought it had to be an Onion article or something, until I heard the ATC recording.
“It” probably is the right pronoun, since it’d be a lot easier to make an unmanned human-shaped drone that could do that, than a real guy in a jetpack. Getting a jetpack-wearing human to that height, and then back down safely, is a mind-blowing engineering feat, and while there might be a few folks who could pull it off, none of them would be pulling a crazy stunt like this.
It was really a GI Joe in a mini-jetpack right outside the cockpit window.
Well, that puts the whole thing in perspective…
Too bad John Lithgow or William Shatner weren’t onboard.
That was my first thought, too—especially the getting back down safely, because if you’re trying to land and you run out of fuel at 500 feet above the ground, you’re SOL.
However, I can think of one way to make it much safer for a human operator, and it fits the observed facts of a person at relatively high altitude for a jetpack (3,000 feet). Maybe the operator was never planning a powered landing, but was instead wearing a parachute, and planned to deploy his chute when the fuel ran out.
In that case, you’d want to get relatively high as quickly as possible, because if your jetpack conks out at 400 feet, that’s not enough altitude to deploy a parachute. On the other hand, 3,000 feet is about right.
I just checked and Richard Browning’s Jet Suit (the one on Adam Savage’s show) is said to be able to reach an altitude of 12,000 feet.
Frankie Zapata’s Flyboard is said to be able to reach 9,800 feet.
And JetPack Aviation’s 2 Jetpacks are both listed as being able to reach 15,000 feet.
Bravo!
But aceplace is also correct. Adam and Jamie attempted to build a jetpack using parts purchased from the internet in an episode that aired in June, 2005 which ended in total failure.
What’s with LAX and the crazies? Larry Walters would be proud
It’s training. ATC and pilots are trained to keep that sort of cool no matter what is happening. The epitome of that to me has long been Alfred C. Hayes, in charge of a crippled DC-10 with no working hydraulic system, unable to fly in a straight line (slow right turns only), wobbling up and down getting ready to attempt to “land” the best. The following exchange took place:
Sioux City Approach: “United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind’s currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You’re cleared to land on any runway.”
Haynes: “[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?”
LA has a lot of small R&D groups.
Somebody experimenting, carelessly?
Yeah, I thought of the possibility of a parachute, as well as the possibility that it didn’t launch from the ground (maybe from a helicopter, or maybe from Larry Walters-style balloons). But while a parachute solves some problems, it introduces others: You’re now adding more weight for the jetpack to carry, and both the jetpack and the parachute need to be harnessed and arranged so that neither one interferes with the operation of the other.
And yeah, it’s not impossible. There are jetpacks that could (probably) do it. But even if you take out the landing requirement, the number that can do it is in the single digits, and none of the known ones is operated by anyone this irresponsible. The number of people who could manage a drone carrying a foam or inflatable mannequin is much greater.
Sounds like this:
The engineering and technology has advanced a lot since Mythbusters attempted a jetpack in 2005.
I agree it seems more likely that a drone with a mannequin was seen in LA. You’d have to be pretty crazy to fly close to commercial airliners. Getting hit by a commercial airliner would be similar to a fly hitting a windshield. 