What made the plane in the sky fall/spin?

[Neowwwm]

Posting for traffic.
About 22 years ago, my 2 school friends and I, at around 14 years old used to wonder why we saw 3 planes going across the sky above our school field back and forth all day everyday. For months it caused me anxiety (thinking it was Iraq planes not understanding radar and defence!) but I now know it was more than 3 planes and so often due to flight path!

(I accept not v AIBU) I remembe how, watching these planes one clear day, one appeared to briefly drop and spin around front-to-back-front again (though very high up)and continue flying. At the time I saw this, my other friend also giddly/faux-horror screamed as she saw it too.

The planes must have just been regular passenger jets. Is what we saw possible, and if it isn't, what could have created the illusion we both saw?

Optical illusion due to sun shine/moisture in clouds/refraction or something?

2 planes going in opposite directions, one flying slightly higher than the other, going in and out of the clouds at just the right time so, like a magic trick, it looked like one plane spinning?

no clue, but what you saw cannot be possible… surely?

A handbrake turn?

was that near a military airfield?

we lived near a nato one when kuweit/irak happened and military planes (including passenger type planes) did all sorts of exercises before leaving for war.

to add - some of the maneuvres were spectacular.

Tom Cruise is at it again😂

There are many UFO reports involving aircraft caused by optical illusions, reflections and natural phenomena, many of them very believable. This was some kind of illusion, you did not see an aeroplane spinning and falling to the ground, what you saw did not happen.

I suspect it was not a passenger jet, but a training flight.
I think one thing that is taught is how to restart the engine when it stalls. That involves going straight upwards until the engine stalls and then restarting it as it falls to earth.
It's done under controlled conditions and the instructor would restart it if the learner couldn't.

1. Three planes together will be military exercises
2. Three teenage girls are very good at hyping each other and making something out of nothing
3. Memory is not infallible

My guess is that one of you thought you might have seen something a bit different, the other two then agreed or even embellished the story enough to make it sound "special" and this has now embedded itself in your brain as fact over the years, possibly even embellishing it yourself albeit subconsciously.

I can't think of a way you could get a passenger plane to spin nose to tail, without the pilot deliberately making the manouver (and I can't think what that would involve) or some serious wacky localised weather.

If they were small planes (2 person), then there is all sorts you can do with them, and part of the fun is putting them in stall dives and recovering as practice.

I was amazed by the antics I saw in the sky when we moved to this country until a look at flightradar showed me how close we are to two military airfields and I was seeing training manoeuvres.

Things like two enormous jets flying wingtip to wingtip etc.

I bet they were training flights you saw.

@Neowwwm

Given what you describe what you saw probably will almost certianly not have been airliners, could well have been military perhaps with an element of optical illusion chucked in at times..it can be tricky to work out exactly what aircraft are doing when seen at a distance

The military often fly in formations as part of training/even in the normal day job, they often do some quite tight manoeuvres whilst doing so, so you may have seen something related to that...there's also just the chance you saw some practise air combat (dog fighting)

OTOH there actually is a manoeuvre/exercise called spinning that the military do using smaller training aircraft. It's not generally not practised much at civilian flying schools these days when teaching beginners because there's a element of risk, it's more relevant for anybody training to do aerobatics or combat flying

In very simple terms the pilot slows the aircraft down, and then (using rudder) make it yaw (slew) sideways ...if it's performed correctly the aircraft will then descend very rapidly spinning down a corkscrew path until the pilot does what is required to recover from the spin.

Looks alarming but FWIW I used to teach doing these things most days I was at work many years ago and I survived to tell the tale. The video below shows what's involved but it is possibly not one for nervous flyers.

HTH

Sky donuts