I agree with Ben Hansen in one of his interviews. It’s very strange and compelling the pilots reported the object 60 miles away, 2 minutes after it flew under their wing.
I doubt the possibility of that for a balloon or any other non-powered objects. I would be interested in getting the actual ARTCC recording to count exactly how much time passed before the “60 mile out” report. https://www.liveatc.net/ could have caught it, but couldn’t find enough information about the encounter to fish it out.
A free floating object could be 20 miles out max, and that’s taking a lot of assumptions and best case scenarios. However, my math could be wrong.
My work
From what I’ve found on performance charts & Beechcrafts website for the Kingair 350C, the max cruise speed at FL20 is around 311KTAS.
https://d16bsf97ryvc45.cloudfront.net/Media/2013/01/kingair_350.pdf
4th page
(Since this is the military’s ISR version, I doubt it would be able to reach that speed due to all the additional drag from the large, protruding antennas. 311kts is best case scenario).
Vs
311KTAS is a little more than 5 nautical miles per minute. Assuming the UFO is unpowered, hence stationary and only moving with the wind, the plane should’ve only flown 10 nautical miles away from the object. (2 minutes out bound since time of 1st report and “60 mile” report)
311kts/60 = 5.183nm per min 5.183•2 = 10.366
(That assumes the plane never turned around to “point” the nose and radar at the object. But, maybe that’s not needed and the aircraft radar works 360°. If the plane did turn around to “point” the radar, the distance would be even shorter. Couldn’t find any details, cant comment on that any further).
BUT, what if exactly when the UFO passed under the planes wing, the plane and UFO entered into separate jet streams, moving in opposite directions, at the same best speed of the aircraft, 311kts. Even in this, extremely unlikely, scenario where the plane and UFO have over 900kts of separation. Our UFO would barely pass 30 miles separation. Even when you bump the time from 2 minutes to 3 of separation, there’s still almost 15 miles unaccounted for.
933kts/60 = 15.55 nm per min 15.55x2 = 31.1 15.55x3 = 46.65
I don’t believe winds aloft couldn’t accounted for this much separation. But, I may have something fundamentally wrong or missing in my basic calculations. if you notice anything, please let me know.