The origin and nature of the object remain a mystery. Image Credit: US Navy
Two separate airliners encountered an unknown object while flying over the Arizona desert in February.
The incidents, which were recently revealed thanks to the release of radio transmissions by the Federal Aviation Administration, occurred immediately after one another.
The first involved the pilot of a Phoenix Air flight who radioed an air traffic control center in Albuquerque to ask if there were any other flights in the area.
He reported that an unknown object had unexpectedly passed him by overhead.
"Was anybody, uh, above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago ?" he asked. "Negative," the control center replied. "Okay," the pilot responded. "Something did."
In an effort to investigate the matter further, the FAA controller at Albuquerque contacted an American Airlines flight that was flying a short distance behind to ask if they had seen anything unusual.
"American 1095 ... We had an aircraft in front of you that reported something pass over him and, uh, we didn't have any targets. So just, uh, let me know if you see anything pass over you," he said.
"It's American 1095," the pilot replied. "Yeah, something just passed over us. I don't know what it was, but at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us."
He followed up by stating that the object had "a big reflection" and that it was "traveling several thousand feet above us, going the opposite direction."
A recording of the first exchange can be heard in the video below.
I like to imagine that too but isn't it more likely that they saw a balloon than some super-ship with a new energy source that the pilots couldn't even tell whether it was moving or not?
Yes, you are right. I think this is a fruitless effort. At best, its just going to be another unidentified object. We'll let MUFON know, they will love it. lol.
Yeah, we will never know and I think we will be seeing a lot more of these unknowns as the skies get ever more crowded with all kinds of odd looking new flying devices. Stealth aircraft, hybrid blimps and dirigibles, drones both military and ccivilian, balloons, supersonic passenger jets, etc.
Why not? If it blew into a busy airway then it is likely multiple aircraft would see a brightly lighted ballon passing slowly through at the primary flight alltitude.
It just came to mind, remembering an account of a fighter pilot's encounter with a weather balloon in Rupert's book Project Blue Book. It's hard to gauge the speed of a slow moving object met head on if you're passing it, really fast.
Absolutely, without a radar lock it is a wild **** guess at best but the fastest it could possibly be moving is the speed of the jet stream at that altitude and while that varies greatly it averages around 100 knots, although I have seen it blowing much faster. Weather balloon was a guess on my part, though, as I have no idea what they were seeing, no one does and as you said, speed is hard to determine.
I was a bit surprised the second crew did not manage to get a better look at the object. The first crew, on-board the Learjet, could quite easily have been taken by surprise, they were not warned by ATC or by their own radar. So it would be a question of looking in the right direction at the right time. The second crew were warned that an unknown had just passed another aircraft ahead of them and it might well come into conflict with their aircraft. If it had been me in the cockpit, I am not a pilot, my eyes would have been out on stalks, flying into something would not look great on your CV... [More]
It sounds like it wasn't very large but was reflection a lot of light so angle off the nose was important evidently " the American Airlines pilot can be heard saying the UFO had a “big reflection” and doubted it was a Google balloon." Google balloons are fairly large Weather relatively small
Please Login or Register to post a comment.