Gus Binos, who lives on Oakwood Drive in Shirley, was washing his car Thursday afternoon. At 3:30 the Long Island man heard a crash. Just twenty feet from where he was standing a metal clipboard slammed in to the ground.

"I just jumped and turned," Binos said in an interview with NBC. "Wow, what if I got hit with it?" The Suffolk County resident continued. "It is a very sharp piece of metal. I mean, with the velocity that it was coming down, it would have stuck a hole in my head."

From that high up an object falls at a rate of 12,000 feet per minute -which is a fall of about two miles in length- and travels at speeds of 165 miles per hour. The metal clipboard would've done exactly what Binos expected it to do.

When Binos looked inside what he saw were aviation documents. This type of clipboard is usually securely strapped to a pilot's leg. Somehow it mysteriously fell from a plane. The documents were of guidelines on how to maneuver through the Hudson River and passed the Statue of Liberty. It also had what seemed to be emergency directions as to the location of Central Islip's MacArthur Airport.

In the same NBC article, FAA examiner Adam Rosenberg says, "Sometimes in the process of preparing to 'pre-flight' an airplane, or after you get out of an aircraft, you will put something on the wing. However, the odds of it making it off the airport property once the airplane begins taking off are very slim."

Rosenberg says that a cockpit door could've somehow opened and the clipboard may have fallen out that way. Jim Peters, an FAA spokesperson says while a pilot doesn't have to report when a personal item falls from a plane, they do need to fill out an official report stating an item fell out because it may affect the air-worthiness of a plane.

[Source: NBC]