Case summary

(from the Flying Saucer Review Vol.23 n°2)

At 21:00 on January 21,1977, Captain Gustavo Ferreira, pilot of an Avianca airliner (registration n°HK-1273), took off from Eldorado airport at Bogota, and flew at a height of 20,000 feet. Suddenly, the pilot saw an extremely bright white light heading straight towards his aircraft from the opposite direction. At the same time, Jorge Jimenez, the radar operator at the airport control tower picked up on his screen an unidentified target travelling at 44,000 feet. The size of the object on the screen was three times the size of a normal aircraft, and it was moving on a zig-zag course.

The other crew members were also looking at the object. It was stationary at times, and moving at other times. The pilot put on the landing lights. The night sky was clear and full of stars. The five crew members were in the cabin which was in darkness. Suddenly, the vivid white light changed to red. The pilot turned off his landing lights, so the plane was in total darkness. Then he switched on his landing lights once more, and the object replied by flashing green lights This exchange of signals had taken about three minutes, after which the object moved away southwards and disappeared rapidly out of sight. In the same time, the radar operator lost it from his screen. It did a 90° turn at a fantastic speed.

    Case summary

According to the pilot:

The two police officers were on routine helicopter patrol « Snoopy II » over Charlotte when they spotted two lighted objects they believed to be aircraft in flying formation.  As they got closer, they observed there were no navigational lights, no rotating beacons, no strobe light.  The pilot climbed for a closer look and he was stunned to see one of the objects suddenly vault from about 1700 ft to about 4000 or 5000 ft in two or three seconds.

The second object was silver looking, bigger than the helicopter and it radiated a strange bright orange glow and had a kind of dome over it.  Suddenly, the object swung past and took up a position behind the helicopter.  The pilot was circling to the left and the object started circling to the left, about 150 ft behind the helicopter.

As he was playing cat and mouse with the object, the pilot radioed the air traffic control at Douglas Municipal airport. The radar controller confirmed that he had on his radar the helicopter, a light plane and two other unknown targets, very close to each other.

The pilot made a complete 360° turn to have another chance to view the object close up.  Suddenly the pilot wheeled the helicopter around in the opposite direction and he caught a brief glimpse of the object again.  A ball of fire came out from underneath and dropped down and the object headed off.  The pilot gave chase at about 140 mph but the object ran off and left him.  Finally all the light went out and the witnesses could not see anything else. The object disappeared at the same time from the radar screen

According to the radar controller:

There were two unknown radar targets, close together then they split up. They were one mile apart laterally on the radar.They were moving and they stayed on the screen

    Case summary

The UFO was detected on ground radar when two F-5E fighters from the FACh were on a routine flight.  The two aircraft separated, one North (its pilot did not see the UFO) and the other flew in a southern direction.  The UFO was flying at 0.92 Mach.

The second plane was ordered to intercept it.  The pilot accelerated to 1.3 Mach and reaching 37,000 ft.  The pilot saw a nebulous blot out 2 miles.  He saw a kind of black triangle with two little tails.  At a distance of 1.5 miles, the UFO made a turn, moved violently in the opposite direction (maneuver detected by the radar in the control tower), speed estimate: three times that of the speed of sound.

This sighting was officially confirmed by General Benjamin Opazo Brun, Wing Commander of the First Wing.

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(From Dr Richard F. Haines' Project Delta)

The pilot of a private plane sighted five orange objects flying in a horizontal line formation.  They tilted and spread out.  Then they regrouped into a vertical line formation and they got all mixed up.  They seemed to come right at the plane as the distance was closing.  They lengthened the distance from the pilot out front and went over to his left. At that time the magnetic compass started spinning and the automatic direction finder started spinning.  At that stage they were again in a straight line formation just before blinking out. According to the pilot, the radio interception was blocked by static and the engine started running rough.  At the same time, ground radar had contacted both the plane and the objects. Finally, a large orange object approached the aircraft at a tremendous speed.  The pilot climbed rapidly and did not see the object again.

    Case summary

During a clear night with a full moon, the pilot of VASP B-727/200 and his crew sighted on the left of their aircraft a unidentified light.  The light maintained its position alongside the airliner at a speed of Mach 0.80. This light had an intensity bigger than Venus changing in color from red to orange in its periphery and bluish-white in the center.  It moved vertically and longitudinally.  CINDACTA called the pilot informing him that it had detected a point in their 9 hour position and at 8 miles from their aircraft.  The light followed the plane alongside, lighting the cabin during their descent.  At two miles from Rio de Janeiro airport, the object moved from a lateral position to the front of the airliner, above the end of the bay at about 6,000 ft.  The pilot asked the Rio Control tower if they detected the object on their radar, and he received a negative reply.

The light was also seen by the pilot of a TRANSBRASIL plane flight 177 and his crew.  He stated that he saw one large light flying at about 8 or 9 miles from the VASP plane.  An Aerolinhas Argentinas airplane (flight 169) also tracked the unknown on its radar.

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On juillet (July) 6, 1983, the pilot of a Polish Air Force fighter Captain Parszcalek and his co-pilot Jucewicz were scrambled by their head Quarter to intercept an unknown target.  He flew at 100 meters high and at 50 km from the seashore.  The HQ radioed him to come back at an altitude of 4.000 meters.  A few times after, the co-pilot observed a target above the sea. He saw at 3000 meters high a strange object which was flying on the left of the fighter along the seashore following an elliptical trajectory.  It looked like a black elongated cylindrical object diameter: 2 meters, length: 6 meters) with two rounded ends.  It had no wings. As the pilot closed in at 200 or 300 meters, the object turned back and flew toward the aircraft.  Immediately, the pilot dived to avoid a collision and prepared to fire, then he made a U-turn to follow the object.  Suddenly it turned left at a speed of 500 kph and disappeared from sight.  According to the pilot, the distance between his fighter and the object during visual contact was 120 meters to 900 meters.  The object was tracked by ground radar station.

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(From Magazine “Ufologist” Volume 3 #2)

On the morning of July 21st 1988, the pilot of a private plane flying to Alice Springs saw at 400 km north of Alice Springs a dull silver frosty disc or round shaped object flying above the ranges.  It was moving quite slowly and the pilot could see an elongated shadow on the ground

The pilot radioed Alice Springs Flight Service and asked them if they had any known traffic in the area.  The strange answer was “we confirmed sighting and position of the other aircraft” which seemed that they have tracked the unknown object.

The pilot was flying over the top of the disc, it suddenly accelerated and was heading towards some ranges 10 km away.  Then it vanished in the air.

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(from the “Near-collision - Air Traffic Incident Report form” filled up by Captain Zaghetti)

During the descent to Heathrow airport, Captain Zaghetti, pilot of an Alitalia MD80, saw for about 3-4 seconds a missile-shaped object. It was light brown colored and flew on an opposite track.  The object was 1,000 higher than the aircraft.  The co-pilot also sighted the object which crossed their flight path.

On the pilot's request, the London ATC center told him that they have an unknown target 10 nautical miles behind the MD80.

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On January 28,1994, the pilot and the crew of an Air France Airbus A320 spotted, at 45 km ahead, a dark bell-shaped object.  Then it looked like a gigantic disc, brownish-red in color, with slightly fuzzy edges.  The object was at about the same level as the plane, and it crossed the plane's trajectory.  It stayed one minute near the airliner, before becoming transluscent and disappearing suddenly without moving.

The object was tracked the military radars of Cinq-Mars-La-Pile during 50 seconds at 100 knots (185 km/h) direction West 240.  According to the radar calculation, the distance between the aircraft and the unknown target was 1 nautical miles.  The CODA ( Centre Operationnel de la Defense Adrienne / French NORAD) at Taverny Air Base asked the pilot to report the incident who refused.

The pilot said first that the object was 1000 meters in diameter and 100 meters thick.  In a later interview with Jean-Jacques Velasco (CNES/SEPRA), the size was calculated to be 200-300 meters (diameter) and about 20-30 meters (thick).

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At 10:25 (Local time) on May 25, 1995, en route from Tampa to Las Vegas, the crew of an America West B-757 saw a UFO while cruising at 39,000 ft.  The object was below their aircraft at between 30,000 and 35,000 feet off their right, and between 15 to 20 miles from the airliner’s position.  First, the object appeared as a row of bright white lights.

Then the UFO moved in front of an active thundercloud.  The frequent lightnings in the clouds showed that the lights were in line along the body of a dark cigar-shaped object.  The object was wingless, elongated, about 300-400 meters in length.  According to the pilot, the object had two very bright white lights, one at each end, and the center lights were blurred together in a left to right sequence.  The object disappeared beyond the right window of the cockpit.

The Albuquerque Air route traffic control did not pick up any unknown target on radar.  According to Air Force bases, there was no military activity at that time.  The Albuquerque flight service confirmed that there was no weather balloon.

According to one of the Albuquerque controllers, NORAD / WASD (Western Air Defense Sector) HQ at Tacoma had tracked an unknown target.

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On July 26, 1995, Everado Carmona was practicing a training flight when he saw passing below his plane a huge bright golden oval-shaped object at about 7,000 ft high.

Three air traffic controllers were tracking the object on their radar scopes.  The pilot had interference on the aircraft instruments during the time he radioed to the Control Tower.

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(From pilot’s report)

On November 20, 1996 the pilot of a Jetstream 3200 was flying from Los Angeles to Fresno, California at an altitude of 10,000 ft.  At approximately 20:45 in the vicinity of Gorman VOR, he saw very bright flashing lights in the distance.  As he got closer he noticed the object looked circular at the bottom and the lights protruded upward from the base.  He requested the Air Traffic Controllers who had a faint primary target on his 10 to 11 o'clock position.  The object would dim to a small amber dot then get very bright white. When the object increased intensity the Air Traffic Control confirmed that the primary target became stronger the pilot continued to get closer and the object would disappear to the small amber light.  The object seemed to stay stationary for period, then oscillating to the northeast to the southwest

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On October 19, 1998, the encounter began when four different radar stations in northern Hebei province picked up an unknown moving target in airspace directly above a military flight training base near Changzhou city.  To observers at the base, the UFO first appeared like "a small star," and then grew larger and larger, perhaps as it descended to a lower altitude, the report said.  They described an object with a mushroom-shaped dome on top and a flat bottom covered with bright, continually rotating lights.  A base commander surnamed Li reported to his superiors, who ordered a Jianjiao-6 armed interceptor airborne to pursue the object once checks showed no other civilian or military aircraft in the area.  The two pilots aboard said the object closely resembled depictions they had seen in foreign science fiction films.  When they got within 4,000 meters (13,200 feet) of the UFO over Qing county, it abruptly shot upward, easily evading subsequent attempts to get closer.  According to the pilots, it appeared to be toying with the fighter by repeatedly outdistancing it and then reappearing just above it.

According to the report, he report said a request for permission to fire on the UFO with an onboard cannon was denied by ground command at one point.  The interceptor was eventually forced to return to base after it ran out of fuel at an altitude of 12,000 meters (39,600 feet).  The UFO then disappeared before two newer-model planes could get airborne.

At least 140 people on the ground also saw the object.