LOS ANGELES, April 30 -- The pilot of a commercial flight said Wednesday his plane may have been hit by a drone thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) in the air as he came in to land at a US airport.

Recordings of the conversation between air traffic control in San Diego and a United Airlines flight reveal the pilot believed his Boeing 737 could have made contact with a small airborne device.

The incident happened around 8:30 am (1630 GMT), 90 minutes after the plane took off from San Francisco, flying at an altitude of around 3,000 feet (900 meters).

"It was so small I couldn't tell," the pilot told controllers who had asked for more details about the possible drone strike.

"It was red...it was shiny."

A few minutes earlier, the pi...