Commercial Airline Pilot Says UFOs Are Real

Why do people assume that professionals have some better qualifications dealing with this subject? I got 10,000 hours of flying and I say he is wrong, so who is right in this case? I just love it when people say that some doctor, cop, pilot etc say they are real and if you actually knew a lot about those professions they are more screwed up then most…hehe Just talk to nurses about the doctors working in their hospitals, or the flight attendant about the pilots they work with.

When the pilot sees something and it's confirmed by the passengers then the case cannot just be dismissed as a crazy pilot.

Regardless of the ultimate nature of the phenomenon seen it's simplistic to to hand-wave reports from pilots as being caused by mental instability.

The extra credibility given to pilots isn't because they are somehow extraordinary humans incapable of error but purely because they are experienced at viewing objects in the sky and probably have a better idea of what its normal 'up there' and what isn't. For instance you'd expect them to be able to recognise sun dogs, weather balloons and other 'unexpected' phenomena better than a lay person. So when one claims they saw something they didn't recognise, it carries a bit more weight than your ordinary man in the street (or should that be in the air). That's all it is.

reply to post by MarrsAttax

Some respected UFO researchers have found that pilots are not necessarily better observers than anyone else. They make misidentifications too.

J. Allen Hynek, the pro-UFO astronomer who coined the famous term Close Encounters of the Third Kind, wrote in his book The Hynek UFO Report (p.271 of the paperback edition) that “commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses”. Hynek found that the majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects, just as they are for other UFO witnesses. Only slightly better results were found by Allan Hendry, who investigated over 1,300 cases reported to the Center for UFO Studies in the US during the course of a year. Hendry found that he could explain 75% of the sightings from pilots. In the case of sightings by police officers, the clear-up rate rose to 94%.

www.ianridpath.com...

reply to post by Phage


What that article doesn't state is that those statistics were produced with reference to Blue Book cases only.

On page 58-59 of the same book Allen voices his suspicion about the cases fed to Blue Book:

The were many times during my twenty years as a scientific consultant to Blue Book that I also wondered whether the very best reports were being kept from Blue Book...My own suspicions about this were reinforced by Richard Budelman..He served in a sensitive position with a Top Secret Navy Squadron stationed at Port Lyautey, Morocco...He is firm in his own belief that had a UFO been sighted by the pilot or crew of one of his squadron's aircraft...the report would never have reached Project Blue Book....But there's another reason why I also believe Blue Book didn't have access to that kind of Top Secret information - that it was in certain respects "low man on the totem pole." The low rank of the officer in charge of Blue Book was a dead giveaway.

Source: The Hynek UFO Report by DR. J Allen Hynek Sphere Books Ltd 1978

If this suspicion was correct it's not surprising to see a greater proportion of misidentifications in the data if the sample has been artificially distorted from the outset.

Here are the actual statistics presented on Page 271 as percentages of misidentifications of Blue Book cases

• Military pilot (single witness) 88%
  
• Military Pilot (multiple witness) 76%
  
• Commercial pilot (single witness) 89%
  
• Commercial pilot (multiple witness) 79%
  
• Radar technicians (multiple witness) 78%
  
• Technical person (single witness) 65%
  
• Technical person (multiple witness) 50%
  
• Other (multiple witness) 83%
  

Here is the quote in full

It would seem that, as a rule, the best witnesses are multiple engineers or scientists; only 50% of their sightings could be classified as misperceptions. Surprisingly, commercial and military pilots appear to make relatively poor witnesses (though they do slightly better in groups).
What we have here is a good example of a well-known psychological fact: "transference" of skill and experience does not usually take place. That is, an expert in one field does not necessarily "transfer" his competence to another one. Thus it might surprise us that a pilot had trouble identifying other aircraft. But it should come as no surprise that a majority of pilot misidentifications were of astronomical objects.

One could certainly draw that conclusion from the Blue Book data alone but one could also argue that the reports from pilots are inherently more likely to contain mis-sightings of astronomical objects than other professions simply because pilots spend a great deal more time looking at the sky than most people. That doesn't mean that pilots per se are more unreliable as witnesses which I believe is Ridpath's implication in his disingenuous use of the quote.

You could also argue that from Hynek's view, while in cases of the 'lights-in-the-sky' variety, pilot's should be given no more credibility than anyone else, for those cases where the pilot describes a structured craft as in the Captain Terauchi case mentioned above by SonoftheSun, viz.

Most unexpectedly two spaceships stopped in front of our face, shooting off lights. The inside cockpit shined brightly and I felt warm in the face. Perhaps the firing of jets was the result to kill inertia of their quick high speed maneuver, but the ships appeared as if they were stopped in one place in front of us.

Then three to seven seconds later a fire like from jet engines stopped and became a small circle of lights as they began to fly in level flight at the same speed as we were, showing numerous numbers of exhaust pipes. However, the center area of the ship where below an engine might be was invisible. The middle of the body of the ship sparked an occasionally stream of lights, like a charcoal fire, from right to left and from left to right. Its shape was a square, flying 500 feet to 1000 feet in front of us, very slightly higher in altitude than us, its size was about the same size as the body of a DC-8 jet, and with numerous exhaust pipes. The firing of the exhaust jets varied, perhaps to maintain balance, some became stronger than others and some became weaker than others, but seemed controlled automatically.

Source: www.ufoevidence.org...

then we should treat the pilot's report with more seriousness because as Hynek says, we expect pilots to be able to recognise aircraft because that is their area of speciality.

[edit on 4/8/2010 by MarrsAttax]

I really do get tired of this mentality that's been drummed into us from childhood - nothing is "right" until it's been marked and graded by the proper authority. Your answers are worthless unless officially sanctioned.

Simple fact, there are aircraft that exceed the operations of our contemporary aircraft flying in our skies. We see them depicted in paintings and cave drawings throughout history. We have many credible witnesses who have reported sightings of these craft, and who knows how much video footage. I personally have seen lights in the sky that behaved in a way that cannot be explained away as airplanes, helicopters or shooting stars. The existence of UFOs is not in question, nor is it the important question.

The important question is who controls them and what are they doing. So many people seem to think that UFOs are automatically alien craft from another planet. That's our assumption.

Please do remember, UFO means Unidentified Flying Object. All "official" air vehicles have identifying features and signals, they respond to radio requests for identification. Anything that does not respond and cannot be identified is a UFO. Again, that does not mean aliens from outer space looking to slice open a cow. It means "I don't know what that is, I'd better call it in".

Originally posted by TheIrvy
Simple fact, there are aircraft that exceed the operations of our contemporary aircraft flying in our skies. We see them depicted in paintings and cave drawings throughout history.

If you're referring to the A-12 back when it was classified, I agree it exceeded the operation of known contemporary aircraft of the time. And I have no reason to believe that development of secret high performance aircraft ended with the A-12/SR-71 so there are probably more modern secret aircraft we don't know about that can exceed the performance of known contemporary aircraft.

But I've never seen anything like that in cave paintings. But I have seen people think old anthropomorphic representations of the sun and moon are spaceships.

But I've never seen anything like that in cave paintings. But I have seen people think old anthropomorphic representations of the sun and moon are spaceships.

No, you've listened to 2 opinions of what 2 people read from a cave painting, and given more credence to one opinion over the other. These caves and other paintings weren't labelled and didn't have notes attached. Anybody can tell you what they think these paintings are, religious, entertainment, informational, advertising. Too much credence is given to speculation because of who's doing the speculating. A guess is still a guess.

Ufos ARE real, but they're ours. The chance of them being alien is small, possible, but small.