NEW YORK — The FBI and the US Federal Aviation Administration are investigating a pilot's report that he spotted a small unmanned aircraft near a major New York City airport. The Alitalia pilot told controllers that he saw the drone as he approached the runway at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Monday afternoon. The pilot said the aircraft was about 5 miles (8 kilometers) southeast of the airport and was flying at an altitude of about 1,500 feet (457 meters). The pilot reported that the aircraft was about 1 meter long, an FBI spokesman said Tuesday. The pilot can be heard on radio calls captured by LiveATC.net, a website that posts air traffic communications, saying, “We saw a drone, a drone aircraft.” Some remote-controlled planes flown by hobbyists are longer than 1 meter. Under FAA rules, model planes are restricted to altitudes of 400 feet (121 meters) or less. Meanwhile, a late winter storm dumped heavy snow on the midwestern United States Tuesday, contributing to numerous highway crashes and flight cancellations as it moved east toward the Ohio Valley and the mid-Atlantic states. More than 1,000 flights were cut in and out of Chicago's O'Hare and Midway airports and 107 more were cancelled in and out of Minneapolis-St.Paul International Airport, according to the FlightAware.com flight tracking service. – Agencies
