The russians are denying it saying that the thingy (which was docked to the space station) was still docked at that time. NASA back them up. They reckon it was a meteor.

Thingy is a technical term used by space folks.

Fair enough.

For me, the important bit of the story is imagining the looks on the pilots' faces, whatever it was.

Talking of the look on the pilots' faces, there's this uplifting tale of what happened when an airliner ran out of fuel halfway through the flight following a metric/imperial mixup:

Seconds later the right side engine stopped too and the 767 lost all power, leaving the cockpit suddenly silent (allowing the cockpit voice recorder to easily pick out the words...

It ends happily.

Impressive.

Wow, a glide ratio of 12:1 is pretty impressive for an aircraft like the Airbus, I would have guessed about 5:1.

I bet those pilots never took off again with less than full tanks even if they were just ferrying the plane to a different airport in the same city.

Oh my god.

I think Air Canada should have guaranteed a long, comfortable life -- on the ground -- for those pilots and their families. That's amazing. They landed with no injuries!

BTW, I saw a TV report about
this flight just a few years ago. All the passengers said they thought they'd flown into the Twilight Zone.