UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

Some of the best and most close proximity UFO encounters are reported from the pilots who are right up there in the skies with these mysterious objects. I have recently done a series of articles covering some of these cases, spanning the 1950s, the 1970s, on into the 1980s, and most recently the 1990s, only really hitting the tip of the iceberg on such reports, which are numerous. Of course it goes beyond even that, well into the present day, and pilots continue to come into contact with things up there that cannot be easily explained. Here let us look at a selection of very odd pilot UFO encounters from the year 2000 and onwards.

One strange case comes from the files of UFO researcher Scott Corrales, with the Institute of Hispanic Ufology (IHU), and involves a bizarre UFO encounter experienced by a Mexican military Merlin C26/A jet belonging to the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA). On March 5, 2004, the jet was on maneuvers to patrol for drug runners in the area of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche, when the pilot picked up a radar hit for an unknown object at an altitude of around 3,500 meters. The very fast-moving object was also seen on the its infrared equipment (FLIR), and the jet followed it only to lose it in the clouds. After that, they then detected more of the objects, 11 in total, which appeared from the clouds to follow and surround the jet. At the time there were eight witnesses to this surreal event, including the pilot, radar operator, FLIR operator, and other monitoring specialists, and they were able to take video footage of some of the objects through the FLIR. Oddly, the objects were only picked up on radar and FLIR, and were not witnessed with the naked eye. All of the crew insisted that these could not have possibly been any normal aircraft. The footage was shown on Mexican news outlets and created quite a stir at the time, although it is a relatively obscure case outside of Spanish speaking sources.

One of the FLIR images of the objects

From the same year is a case from San Francisco, California, involving a passenger airliner making its final approach to San Francisco International Airport on November 3, 2004. As the plane was making its approaching descent, the pilot and co-pilot observed a bright orange light flashing to the west, and it then began to change colors from orange to white in an alternating pattern. They at first thought this must be another plane, but the object soon was behaving in an erratic manner that showed that it was no normal aircraft. The pilot would say of what happened next:

It then began to move in a northeasterly direction. Once again, being in an airplane, it is very easy to think an object is moving, from small corrections the autopilot makes. I found a handful of stars to serve as a reference point and verified that the object was slowly moving north. It moved about 30 degrees and then stopped. Then, it made a slight tangent to the right and continued moving for about 20 more degrees. It stopped and turned again to the right and continued for 10 degrees, then stopped again and disappeared. The whole sighting ran about two minutes or so from start to finish. It was difficult to judge the actual distance and speed. When I talk about ‘moving in degrees and turning,’ I am talking about my cockpit viewpoint and compass degrees. The UFO’s size was very small, about the size of the stars and planets you see in the sky. There were two of us in the cockpit, and we both witnessed the same thing. We were both in awe. I have been flying for 14 years have never witnessed something like this before.

From the following year we have a report from the files of the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), concerning a not a report from the pilot themselves, but rather from a witness on the ground that saw what appears to have been a harrowing encounter between a fighter jet and UFO. On May 27, 2005, the witness was taking a walk at around 11:30 p.m. on a clear, calm night, when his attention was drawn to something very strange playing out in the sky above., which appeared to be a fighter jet engaging with some sort of triangular UFO. The witness says of what he saw:

The craft’s speed was about 500 knots. The craft was perfectly silent and moving rapidly. Several miles behind the craft was what appeared to be a fighter jet moving very rapidly, 600 to 700 knots. As the jet was chasing the craft they both where flying toward my position. I could begin to hear the engines of the jet at that time. It appeared as thought the triangular craft was toying with the jet in that as the jet got closer to the craft, the craft would speed up somewhat and leave the jet behind. As the craft and jet got nearly directly over my location, the triangular craft made a sharp right hand turn the west. The jet was unable to make the turn at the same angle as the craft. The jet’s turn was much more pronounced and made a much wider loop. Due to that, the jet lost quite a bit of ground on the craft during the turn, yet again as both craft began traversing in a straight line toward the west-northwest the craft again appeared to toy with the pursuing jet in the same manner aforementioned. After a few seconds it appeared that the craft accelerated dramatically and left the jet behind. I observed the jet make one tight loop several miles from my position and then turn off to the north-northeast and flew out of my line of sight.

One thing that was odd about the triangular craft was the three lights making up the triangular pattern were not equal in distance. Referencing the wingspan of the jet, two of the lights on the craft were about 50 to 75 feet apart and the third light was approximately 100 to 150 feet from the other two lights. Additionally, the two lights closer together were at the front and the other further away light was at the rear facing the pursuing jet. This made the craft to appear to be moving in reverse. It should be noted, that the color of the triangular craft lights were an unusual milky white color, nothing like that of the very bright red, green and white lights observed on the jet. Tinker Air Force Base, which does have fighters, is located about 25 miles east of my house.

Image by Steve Baxter

Unfortunately, despite an investigation into the alleged incident by NUFORC, they were unable to find any further witnesses to the event, and furthermore the military of course denied that such an event had happened or that it even had any jet in the area at the time at all. It would be very interesting to hear an account from the pilot of that jet, but this seems as if it will never happen, and we are forced to wonder what was going on here. Moving to the year 2007, we come to a report from the Alderney Coast of the UK, where two seasoned airline pilots on two separate unrelated flights both saw something very odd in the sky on April 26 of that year. One of the witnesses was a Captain Ray Bowyer, a pilot for Aurigny Airlines, who says he first noticed a bright yellow light at 3 p.m. around 30 miles from the coast during a flight from Southampton. He would describe it as follows:

It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area. It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realized it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a 737. But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide It was exactly the same but looked smaller because it was further away. It was closer to Guernsey. I can’t explain it. At first, I thought it might have been a reflection from a vinery in Guernsey, but that would have disappeared quickly. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes. As I got closer to it, it became clear to me that it was tangible. I was in two minds about going towards it to have a closer look but decided against it because of the size of it. I had to think of the safety of the passengers first. I’m certainly not saying that it was something of another world. All I’m saying is that I have never seen anything like it before in all my years of flying.

Another pilot with Blue Island Airlines also reported something very similar in the same area at the same time, yet air traffic control were unable to get a radar signature for what was being reported. One of the air traffic controllers on duty at the time would explain:

The pilot from Blue Islands was en route to Jersey at the same time and as he went past Sark he described an object behind him to his left. The description was very similar to Captain Bowyer’s and they described it as being in exactly the same place. But they were looking at it from opposite sides. The Blue Islands plane was at 3,500ft at the time so, again, both pilots placed it at the same altitude. If the object was stationary, our equipment would not have picked it up because the radar would have screened it out.

The incident was apparently investigated by the Ministry of Defense, but it is unknown what became of it. From the country of Greece, we have an incident from 2009 that involves both civilian airline pilots and fighter jets. On October 11, 2009, Olympic Airways flight 266 was on a routine flight from Athens to London, when at approximately 3:20 a.m. the pilot noticed a very bright object with a “constantly shifting shape” to the west of Athens. At the same time, two other airliners, Olympic Airways flights 730 to Kos and flight 700 to Rhodes, saw the same thing, and it was also witnessed by personnel at the Athens Airport control tower.

As all of this was going on, the Greek Air Force was tracking the object, and considering the object was not responding to efforts to contact it by radio and was violating Greek airspace, two F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and sent to intercept. The fighters approached the location of the mysterious object, but as they drew closer it is reported as having shot off at breathtaking speed to disappear from sight. Very unusually, although the object had been visually identified on the ground and by the pilots, it had at no point actually shown up on radar. After this, Greek officials would try to cover it all up, but the case eventually leaked to the media, after which the Greek Air Force explained it away as a misidentification of the planet Venus. Case closed, yet the several experienced pilots who observed the object dispute this, saying it was no planet, nor any known aircraft they have ever seen. What was going on here? We may never know for sure.

Image by Steve Baxter

Our final and most recent case we will look at comes from 2012, in the country of Scotland. On December 21 of that year, a passenger Airbus 320 with 220 people aboard was about 13 miles outside Glasgow Airport and making preparations to land when a glowing blue and yellow object sped out of nowhere to narrowly miss the plane, whizzing by just 300 feet below it, a hair’s breadth in respect to aviation. It was so close that the pilots had prepared to take evasive action, but it passed by so quickly they had no time to react. The pilot would later report that there had been “a high risk of collision” with the unidentified object, but ground radar picked up nothing. The pilot and co-pilot would both describe the mysterious object as “blue and yellow or silver in color with a small frontal area.” Part of the transcript between the pilot and ground control during the incident reads:

A320: ‘Er yeah we just had something pass underneath us quite close and nothing on TCAS. Have you got anything on in our area?

Control: ‘Er negative er we’ve got nothing on er radar and we’re n-not talking to any traffic either’

A320: ‘Er not quite sure what it was but it definitely er quite large and it’s blue and yellow’

Control: ‘OK that’s understood, do you have a an estimate for the height?’

A320: ‘Maybe er yeah we were probably about four hundred to five hundred feet above it so it’s probably about three and a half thousand feet. We seemed to only miss it by a couple of hundred feet it went directly beneath us … wherever we were when we called it in it was within about ten seconds… couldn’t tell what direction it was going but it went right underneath us’

An official investigation would be carried out into the matter, which looked into several possible explanations for what had happened, but they were ultimately forced to conclude that it was unexplainable. Part of the official conclusion reads:

The board initially considered likely candidates for the untraced aircraft. The A320 crew had not been able to assimilate any information regarding the form of the untraced aircraft in the fleeting glimpse they had, reporting only a likely colour. Members were of the opinion that, in the absence of a primary radar return, it was unlikely that the untraced aircraft was a fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft or man-carrying balloon. It was considered that a meteorological balloon would be radar significant and unlikely to be released in the area of the Airprox. A glider could not be discounted but it was felt unlikely that one would be operating in that area, both due to the constrained airspace and the lack of thermal activity due to the low temperature. Similarly, the board considered that a hang-glider or para-motor would be radar significant and that conditions precluded them, as they did para-gliders or parascenders. Members were unable to reach a conclusion as to a likely candidate for the conflicting aircraft and it was therefore felt that the Board had insufficient information to determine a cause or risk.

Indeed, for all of these cases there seems to be no rational explanation that can trump the experience and observational skills of these pilots. Sadly, most reports like this will never come properly to light, partly because pilots are afraid to put their reputations on the line to file such things, and partly because many of the reports that are made are just explained away and brushed off, often to the disagreement of the witnesses themselves. We are left with some very intriguing accounts by some very credible witnesses who are right up there with the phenomena, often practically rubbing elbows with it, hinting at something very strange going on up in our skies. Whatever that might possibly be remains to be seen.

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Some of the most spectacular and believable UFO accounts come from pilots of all types. These are those witnesses who are experienced with the skies above our heads and who tend to know what they are looking at, so when they report UFO phenomena, people tend to pay attention. There have been numerous pilot UFO encounters reported across the decades, and here we will look at a selection of accounts from the 1990s.

Our first case here takes us back to January 28, 1994, when Air-France flight AF-3532 had a rather bizarre encounter on its way from Nice, France, to London, England, along with the pilot and commander of the flight, Jean-Charles Duboc, copilot Valerie Chauffour, and 24 passengers on board. At the time the flight was in excellent weather conditions, with high visibility and clear skies, and the flight had gone smoothly until they reached an area somewhere above Coulommiers, France, where they saw something out the window that they at first took to be a weather balloon or another aircraft, but soon proved to be anything but. Duboc would later say of what they saw:

I first identified it like an aircraft facing us, at approximately 45 km (25 Nm), at an altitude of approximately 10500 meters (25 Nm) and at an angle close to 45°. I found this slope absolutely abnormal because aircraft are not inclined at this altitude beyond 30 degrees without risking to fall down. This object seemed to us then absolutely abnormal by its size which seemed immense, its dark red color and of the fuzzy edges. I had the impression to observe a gigantic lens in evolution. It did not resemble anything we had seen in our flying careers. This object, this phenomenon, remained motionless while we left it on our left side, still at an approximate distance of 45 km. We observed it during a good minute, conscious that we were seeing something utterly anomalous. We continued to observe it when it gradually merged with the environment. We saw it becoming translucent, transparent, diluted in space. That was absolutely amazing.

At the time they did not have radar operational because the radar was typically only used to locate storms, but they nevertheless contacted ground control at Rheims to report what they had seen and that was that. Duboc would not file any written report at the time for fear of tarnishing his reputation, but would later change his mind. He would say of this:

In the immediate, the continuations were non-existent, because I did not submit a written report to avoid being ridiculed. It was three years later, as I read an article from Paris Match, which described how a UFO has been detected above Paris, that I made the connection between this UFO and that what I had seen. I then submitted a report to the Gendarmerie Nationale (French police, having an SOP for collection of UFO reports). I barely speak about this encounter, and I had the surprise to note that about one out of ten pilot had observed a unidentified flying phenomenon

After discussing about the observation, we concluded that the object was approximately 300 meters in diameter. I took note of the radar recordings by the CODED (Operational Center of Air Defense). There is a very curious characteristic for the trajectory of the UFO, as it shows that it would have almost collided with us. The minimal distance on the recording is less than 1 Nm, that is to say 10 seconds of flight. This kind of observation is traditional in electronic war. The modern military aircraft are furtive, and at the same time able to synthesize a virtual image of themselves by delaying the radar echo. If a missile had been drawn on this UFO, which was above Paris, it would be our A320 which would probably have been hit by the missile. I think that it is not desirable to shoot fire at this kind of phenomenon.

The following year we have the strange case of a commercial Boeing 737 that was flying towards Manchester Airport, in England on January 6, when a series of very odd and at times harrowing events played out. On the plane’s final approach, the pilot and co-pilot saw a bright light careening towards them at great speed, and before they even could react the object shot by the plane in very close proximity, such that they instinctively ducked and braced for impact. As it passed, they could see that it was “wedge-shaped with what could have been a black stripe down the side” and that it had “a number of small white lights, rather like a Christmas tree.” They also were perplexed that there was no sound at all from the craft, and even more oddly no turbulence caused by its passing. Also strange was that ground control at the airport could find no radar signature of the alleged object. A transcript of the pilot’s conversation with ground control reads:

B737 (1848) – ‘c/s we just had something go down the RHS just above us very fast.’

Manchester – ‘Well, there’s nothing seen on radar. Was it er an ac?

B737 – ‘Well, it had lights, it went down the starboard side very quick.’

Manchester – ‘And above you?’

B737 – ‘er, just slightly above us, yeah.

Manchester – ‘Keep an eye out for something, er, I can’t see anything at all at the moment so, er, must have, er, been very fast or gone down very quickly after it passed you I think.’

B737 – ‘OK. Well, there you go!’

Image by Steve Baxter

At the time there was no known air traffic in the vicinity, and the lack of radar contact caused speculation that it had been a hang glider, paraglider or microlight, but a later investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) would deem these possibilities to be very unlikely. The idea that there had been some sort of military test going on was also dismissed because it was deemed highly unlikely such a thing would have been conducted so close to an international airport, and furthermore the RAF denied having anything to so with it. There was also a lack of any radar contact, which should have happened with a military craft. Oddly, there were no reported sightings from any one on the ground, making the investigation more difficult to get to the bottom of. In the end, the CAA would conclude:

Usually, activity of this kind is accompanied by a rash of ground sightings in the same geographic area; in this case, as far as is known, there were no other reports and therefore the incident has to be viewed in isolation, with no other witnesses. The resources normally available when investigating airmisses are pilots’ reports, corroborated by radar and RT recordings. Often these will provide all the clues necessary, but in this case there is no ‘reported pilot’, and radar recordings do not show any unknown contacts. The lack of a radar contact is not necessarily unusual if weather suppressors are in use on radar, particularly if the object generates a poor radar response.

In these conditions the radar an interpret a non-transponding (primary) contact as weather, and therefore disregards it. Enquiries into military activity did not reveal any ac in the area at the time, and it was considered inconceivable that such activity would take place so close to a busy airport without some sort of prior notification. members put forward other suggestions, such as large model aircraft or commercially operated remotely controlled craft, such as those which are used for survey or photographic work. Considering the prevailing conditions – darkness, high ground, strong NW wind and the proximity of a major international airport – the Group felt that this kind of activity, together with the hang glider/microlight theory, could not be regarded as a realistic possibility.

That same year there was a report from an America West B-757 passenger airliner flying over the panhandle of Texas, in the United States near Bovina, Texas, when First Officer John J. Waller and a flight attendant noticed a “row of white lights” that were flashing in a left to right pattern. These lights were somewhere below their position, but when ground control was notified, there could be found no radar target in the area, although one of the controllers contacted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), and was told that they were tracking an unidentified object. In the meantime, the pilot and co-pilot could now see that the object was cigar-shaped and massive, an estimated 300 to 400 feet long. The whole of it then moved out of sight. When NORAD was contacted again about what they had picked up, they claimed that the thing had made several very fast accelerations and decelerations at speeds of between 1,000 and 1,400 mph. UFO researcher Walter N. Webb would take great interest in the case and not only procure transcripts of the pilot’s conversation with ground control, but also file several Freedom of Information Act requests and search military records, but nothing could be found that could account for what had been seen. It remains a mystery. You can read the transcripts on the case here.

Image by Steve Baxter

Also in 1995 is a report from Long Island, New York, where on November 18 of that year airliner Lufthansa 405, an Airbus A-340, was on its way overseas to Germany. At some point the pilot called Boston Air Traffic Control to report a “long, cylindrical object with a white flashing light on its front, and a long, green, comet-like tail,” which was also seen by British Airways Flight 226 on a flight from London. The large mysterious object apparently sped by both airliners, but ground control could find no scheduled air traffic in the region to account for it. Part of the transcript between the Lufthansa flight (LUFT) ground control (FAA) and the British Airways flight (BRIT) reads as follows:

LUFT: Uh, Boston, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, go ahead.

LUFT: Uh, we just passed traffic on the left wing, uh, about 2,000 to 3,000 feet above us. What traffic was it?

FAA Is this Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: Affirmative, Lufthansa 405. We had opposite traffic on the left wing. Can you confirm this?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, negative. I show no traffic in your area within, uh, 20 or 30 miles.

LUFT: It should be now on our tail, about 10 miles… We passed it just one minute ago, and it was looking strange.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226 confirms that. It was just above us on our left-hand side about 3 minutes ago.

FAA What altitude does it appear to be at, Lufthansa 405?

LUFT: It was only 2 or 3 thousand feet above us. We are now passing (Flight) Level 260. That’s confirmed, or not? Lufthansa.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger.

BRIT: Speed Bird 226, we confirm that. We had something go past us about two, well…about one to two thousand feet above on the left hand side. Uh, looked like a green trail on it, and a very bright light on the front of it. We assumed it was an opposite traffic.

FAA: Speed Bird 226, roger that.

LUFT: ((Garbled))..Lufthansa 405/Heavy. we are right now about 26 miles east of “Hotel Tango Oscar ((Hampton??)).” And the Speed Bird is now ahead, or behind us ((or where)?

FAA: Lufthansa 405, the Speed Bird is in your 12:00 o’clock, and about 30 miles, 40 miles.

LUFT: That was not our traffic. Lufthansa 405 Heavy.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger. And the heading of the traffic, was it the same direction, or opposite direction?

LUFT: Exactly opposite. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Did it pass off your right side?

LUFT: Uh, left side.

FAA: Roger.

BRIT: Yea, Speed Bird 226 confirms that. We saw the same thing. It certainly looked like an aircraft initially, but it may not have been one.

LUFT: ((We can’t tell then??)) It was looking very strange, with a long, uh, light, in the tail.

BRIT: Yea, a big bright white light on the front, and a greenish tail coming out the back.
FAA: Speed Bird 226, did it go over…did it go overhead. The traffic go overhead you, or was it below you?

BRIT: It was overhead and off to the left, much the same as ((garbled)). It actually looked about…opposite traffic, 2000 feet above. That’s what it initially looked like. But then it did have a very strong trail to it…a vapor trail, which looked more like smoke. And the light on the front was very, very bright, and as it went past us, it seemed to ((just?)) disappear and ((went)) 5 miles behind us.

LUFT: Can you confirm this, Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: OK, Lufthansa 405, Speed Bird 226. Thanks, we’ll look into it.

LUFT: It was pretty close, and like Speed Bird said, it looked like ((four??)) or three thousand feet above on the left wing, just one mile and, uh, on opposite track… It doesn’t have, …it didn’t have any uh, lights…((normal)) lights, beacon lights, or red or green lights. Only a white light in the front, and with a long green light. It looked like a U-F-O.

FAA: Lufthansa 405, roger that. Like I said, we had nothing flying in the area. You are just north of a military operating area, but the traffic shouldn’t have varied out that far out,…out of the area.

LUFT: Must have been a military. Lufthansa 405/Heavy.

FAA: Roger. Giant Killer, ((garbled)) 59.

GK: Giant Killer.

FAA: Hey, you got anything flying out in the area?

GK: Negative, ((105 is??)) turned over. 0300.

FAA: Well, I just received a couple of UFO reports.

GK: Oh, is that right?

FAA? Yea, I had a couple of guys that reported lights, just moved all over their heads. I have no traffic whatsoever in the area. They said it passed within a mile of them, like at 2-3 thousand feet above them, opposite direction. ((Garbled)) green trail out the back.

What was going on here? Who knows? Our next case comes from the following year, when on February 28, 1996, the crew of Air Shuttle flight 5959 reported something bizarre while flying near Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. It was reported that the crew witnessed a bright light below them, which soon began flashing with multi-colored lights a few thousand feet below their plane. The strange lights were also seen by another aircraft, a Mesaba Airlines flight 3179, but Cleveland Air Traffic Control were unable to pick the object up on radar. Flight 5959 decided to descend to get a closer look at what they were seeing, and the pilot reported that it was spinning and pulsating, with “a rotating light around it like a Frisbee type thing that’s going around it,” and in the meantime Mesaba 3179 flashed its lights at the UFO in an effort to communicate to no effect. Apparently, some passengers took photographs of the UFO, but happened to these remains as mysterious as the identity of the object.

The following year there would be another case involving what are called “near-misses,” when a UFO passes within dangerously close distance of an aircraft. The report comes from August 9, 1997, when a Swissair Boeing 747 was on a short flight from Philadelphia International Airport to Boston Logan International Airport. At approximately 5:07 p.m., both the pilot, Capt. Phil Bobet, and his co-pilot saw an unidentified bright light go speeding past them the opposite direction at close proximity, “like a rocket” and too fast to be another plane. The object apparently came out of nowhere and disappeared just as fast. There has never been any explanation.

On February 3, 1999, there is the spectacular case of several pilots off the Danish coast above the North Sea reporting having been buzzed by a massive cylindrical UFO “as big as a battleship.” One of the pilot reports in particular stands out, that of the pilot of a Debonair BAe146 aircraft who claimed that the object had approached extremely close and lit up the plane with an “incandescent light.” A spokesperson with the CAA would say of the incident:

The captain reported seeing an unnatural bright light below his aircraft while flying at 28,000 ft. The area below him was illuminated for about 10 seconds by incandescent light and it was certainly not a light from another plane. Three other aircraft saw it moving at a high speed or static. However, air traffic control were informed and they confirmed that there were no other planes in the vicinity. Then, five minutes later, there was a brief radar return from a spot 75 miles away. We believe there was no danger involved.

The case would later sort of be brushed off and the military would not comment, despite the fact that it was reported that a military radar station in Yorkshire had tracked it after it had entered UK air space. This case, like all the others mentioned here, has gone on to be unexplained, and we are left to wonder what we are dealing with. What is zipping about up in out airspace menacing these aircraft? Is there some rational explanation, or is there something more mysterious at work? It remains to be seen.