'Mile-wide UFO' spotted by British airline pilot

yea radars trying a reflection, thats a good one!!!!!!

When you eliminate the obvious, whats left????

Originally posted by The Lass
Commonsense would dictate that pilots make for very credible witnesses when it comes to UFO sightings. You would imagine a pilot would consider unusual sightings calmly & without emotion, to be detached almost & entirely rational. And that their testimony would be without any embellishment and be somehow more reliable than that of the average person.

But I wonder if that is the case ?

The most dangerous threat in flight is another aircraft in close proximity. Pilots seeing an unusual object must instinctively attribute "aircraft like" characteristics to it, simply because their experience in the cockpit has trained them to take swift action to avoid collision. It's their gut reaction.

The pilot here initially said that the UFO was "the size of a Boeing 737, perhaps twice the size". His eyes saw the object & his training and experience initially made him compare what he saw to an aircraft. When the pilot draws the UFO for the reporter he describes its "fuselage" and tries to describe features on it.

He doesn't appear to be considering any alternative explanation for what he saw, light reflections on clouds for example. His mindset says "aircraft" ... and his inability to explain what he saw turns this into a UFO with markings etc. Faced with a radar track which places the object many tens of miles away from his own aircraft's position he then extrapolates what he saw and guesses the object to be a mile wide.

I'd be interested to hear what pilots think about their own perception when in flight, whether they believe they have a better ability than the rest of us when it comes to explaining unusual phenomenon.

if it's a mile wide then more people should have seen it.

reply to post by da pickles


Red sky at night shepherds delight, red sky in morning, nuclear warning!

Seriously, on to the matter at hand.

I've seen this one before but while I am the eternal sceptic, this chap really believes in what he saw. He is lucid and for once the piece received media attention, albeit on 'Richard and Judy'!

I think sometimes that the argument needs to shift slightly - not in the sense of proving UFOs but in the creation of sufficient interest in the questions raised, to change public opinion, so that those that experience such phenomena are not considered quacks.

I am sure that pilots see lots of freaky stuff up there, for this one specific incident to raise to this kind of profile means that it passed the most vigourous test any pilot can receive - peer review. If his pilot friends though he was seeing things, they wouldn't fly with him.

Originally posted by The Lass
Commonsense would dictate that pilots make for very credible witnesses when it comes to UFO sightings. You would imagine a pilot would consider unusual sightings calmly & without emotion, to be detached almost & entirely rational. And that their testimony would be without any embellishment and be somehow more reliable than that of the average person.

But I wonder if that is the case ?

The most dangerous threat in flight is another aircraft in close proximity. Pilots seeing an unusual object must instinctively attribute "aircraft like" characteristics to it, simply because their experience in the cockpit has trained them to take swift action to avoid collision. It's their gut reaction.

The pilot here initially said that the UFO was "the size of a Boeing 737, perhaps twice the size". His eyes saw the object & his training and experience initially made him compare what he saw to an aircraft. When the pilot draws the UFO for the reporter he describes its "fuselage" and tries to describe features on it.

He doesn't appear to be considering any alternative explanation for what he saw, light reflections on clouds for example. His mindset says "aircraft" ... and his inability to explain what he saw turns this into a UFO with markings etc. Faced with a radar track which places the object many tens of miles away from his own aircraft's position he then extrapolates what he saw and guesses the object to be a mile wide.

I'd be interested to hear what pilots think about their own perception when in flight, whether they believe they have a better ability than the rest of us when it comes to explaining unusual phenomenon.

It physically hurts me when I see posts like this just because they're so nonsensical. To imply that pilots who have flown for 20 years and seen hundreds of strange things in the air that they never "compared to an aircraft" can't differentiate between something that looks like a craft and something that doesn't is ludicrous.

It's not that pilots are better at recognizing potential UFOs just because they're pilots. It's the thousands of flights they've taken and the millions of circumstances they've been in called "experience" that allow them to identify something that's truly exceptional when it comes along.

Had this been a pilot with 100 hours of flying time, I'd agree with you. But 20 years? Come on dude. At some point you have to address the denial.

Thanks for all the replies folks. I hesitated bringing this up and was not really quite sure how it would be received here on ATS. I also feared the thread would die fairly quickly(and this could happen), but found it too interesting to ignore posting.

Originally posted by Mintwithahole.
There is this natural presumption that because this was seen by a highly trained pilot then it must be true. Pilots, and other highly trained skilled people are just as likely to make a mistake when confronted with something out of the norm unexpectedly as anyone else. He's possibly flown that route for years without any problems and then suddenly he see's this object. . . It's unexpected and bizarre granted, but don't get too excited. This could have a normal explanation.

Well...yes, it could have a perfectly logical(however, UFO, or even alien explanation is not illogical) and, or mundane explanation.

But, keep in mind, two pilots saw it, both from different air crafts. A few passengers saw it, and it was also picked up on radar for a brief moment. No offense intended, but I'd take a pilots' word when it comes to crafts in the sky.

Originally posted by Mintwithahole.
There is this natural presumption that because this was seen by a highly trained pilot then it must be true.

You see, we're not saying that it must be true...we're saying, because of all the evidence(eye witness & radar) gathered so far...it's very likely to be true. And the fact remains, the craft was not identified, so it remains in the archives as an unidentified flying(or maybe floating in this case) object. Also, to be technical with the matter, no one is calling the pilot a liar. I think what he describes is exactly what he saw...and that's all that it is.

Thanks for the additional info Kandinsky.

If only more pilots had the nerve to speak their mind we would have overwhelming evidence of ufos and perhaps the scientific community would be forced to deal with the subject seriously, instead of superficialy.

Several decades ago people feared the MIB but we seldom here about them now-a-days. Today it is mostly fear of ridicule that is preventing public disclosure.

reply to post by atsbeliever


yea sure, a pilot who's flown that route for over 10 years and seen all types of weather conditions, he would surely know something out of the ordinary (a sunlight reflection of the water) to a solid mass in the sky.
And that theory is pretty much debunked on the UFO hunter show too so tell me another one.

More than 1 person saw the same thing, from very different directions & locations.

Sorry.]]
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Nothing to be sorry about. Just because it's seen from several locations and one of the witnesses is a well respected pilot does not make this a alien space craft. Sometimes two or three seperate incidents get rolled into one large ufo incident just like Rendlesham for instance. Yes, it must have been pretty strange to catch out the pilot. Yes something was seen from elsewhere that seems at first hand to correlate with the pilots sighting, but what does that prove? Does it prove we are being visited by aliens? Does it prove that our government were testing a new prototype aircraft? Does it prove that there was some strange weather conditions at the time of the sighting? Does it prove that pilots and other professionals are just as likely to make mistakes when faced with something unusual? "Does it honestly prove anything at all. . ?"

reply to post by mithrawept


just to let you know the aircraft being flown was a trilander and they only have 1 air crew the pilot.we dom get some freaky weather out here . we quite often get called out for sightings of red flares , these turn out to be red lights on transmitter masts bouncing off low cloud or sea fog. about 2 months ago i was listening to the local radio on my way to work. a person phoned up a request a song for his wife . apparently the night before she had been driving a couple of miles up the road when the car started to play up . in the field next to the road she claimed to see a large cigar shape with different coloured lights flashing. her cd player then refused to work so she sped off out of the area. unfortunatley the dj dismissed it as a joke and i never heard any more about it . a week ago i saw a shooting star? it was very large , moving slower than normal and instesad of a smooth streak i could see the particles in the trail and it was very orange .
i try to keep an open mind about these things but the radio incident happened on a tuesday , not a night for partying here. ps i live in the group of islands where the pilot spotted the ufo

Good documentary with interviews with pilot and radar operator.


See 13:02

m.youtube.com...