HOUSTON, Texas USA — A Continental Airlines pilot said something came awfully close to invading his flight’s airspace Monday morning. But what was the object that was soaring so close to a passenger jet?

John Etgen speaks with KHOU news on report of FAA rocket incident in Houston.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the FBI are investigating a report by the pilot of Continental Flight 1544 shortly after the plane took off from Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport enroute to Cleveland. The pilot described seeing a fast-moving object with a thick smoke trail nearing his airspace.

While there has been no conclusion, the FAA said it is more than likely the object was a high-powered model rocket.

But Model Rocketeers bristle at the mention that it could have been one of theirs that had the close encounter with the jet.

"It is very unlikely that the motor would still be running at that point. It would just be coasting. It is possible to fly that high. But very unlikely under powered flight,” said model rocketeer John Etgen.

He isn’t alone. Dozens of other model rocket aficionadas have either e-mailed or called to complain that a model rocket could not get close enough to a passenger jet to cause alarm.

It is the FAA that maintains it was likely a model rocket of some kind. But the FBI now won't say what the object might have been.

FBI sources told 11 News that there are slightly different versions of what happened Monday.

After arriving safely in Cleveland, the captain of the Continental flight told investigators what he saw was two miles from the plane and appeared to be the vapor trail of a rocket.

The co-pilot told agents that what he saw was a more dense black smoke coming from the object.

Leading some rocketeers to their own theory that what the pilots saw was an illegally fired high-powered firework.

It is illegal without a permit, but possible to buy what are known as black powder rockets. They are essentially backroom fireworks that are bigger than they are supposed to be and capable of reaching 5,000 feet – the altitude of the Continental jet Monday.

Those projectiles also produce a thick smoke trail and not the short burst of smoke that comes from high-powered model rockets.

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