6 Airline Pilots Who Sow UFO Actually

Andrew Danziger

In 1989, First Officer Andrew Danziger was on a flight from Kansas City to Waterloo, Iowa, and had ascended to 4,500 meters (15,000 ft) when he noticed a white disk visible through clouds to the right of the plane. He conferred with the pilot, who also spotted the object. After ruling out the possibility that it was the Moon, a searchlight, or any mundane aerial object, they continued to engage in flight duties, occasionally glancing at the object. After 20 minutes, Danziger realized that the white disk had been replaced by a massive red ball floating above the cloud cover, which was maintaining a parallel course with the flight. When the plane dropped to 4,000 meters (13,000 ft), the ball descended and vanished behind the clouds. Then there was a burst of multicolored lights within the cloud.Danziger reported that the cloud itself started to stretch apart “like Silly Putty,” and then the object, lights, and cloud collectively vanished. After confirming with air traffic controllers that nothing had been seen on radar, the pilot and Danziger were asked nonchalantly, “Do you want to report a UFO?” They were given the number to the National UFO Reporting Center, who told them other pilots had reported similar incidents on a fairly regular basis.Danziger’s story got special attention because he was the pilot for Barack Obama on Election Day in 2008. He also gained some notoriety for arguing that TWA Flight 800 was shot down in 1996 and never suffered from a faulty fuel tank.

Guernsey UFO

In 2007, Captain Ray Bowyer was flying an Aurigny plane from Southampton to Alderney when he spotted a number of UFOs through binoculars near the British island of Guernsey. Initially, he described the UFOs as flat yellow disks that he thought were caused by the Sun’s reflection from Guernsey greenhouses.But then he realized they were something else because they did not hurt his eyes as looking at the reflection of sunlight would. He later described himself as “pretty shook up” by the experience. Allegedly, the objects were also reported by passengers on the plane and other pilots in the area.Bowyer described one of the objects as a “very sharp, thin, yellow object with a green area. It was 2,000 feet up and stationary. [ . . . ] 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.” He saw a second, identical object to the west when making his descent toward Alderney.In the aftermath, Bowyer’s sighting was largely ignored by the international media. Then suddenly, he was contacted by four different TV crews interested in the story, including one from the Netherlands and one from Canada.At the time, Bowyer commented, “The big question is what has led to such renewed interest that four different groups from different countries on pretty much the same day have wanted to come to Alderney to do this. The odds on it are pretty long. Somebody somewhere has some control over this, and I’m looking to establish who that is.”

Bariloche Incident

As an Aerolineas Argentinas flight landed at Bariloche Airport in 1995, it was approached by a luminous disk moving in a way that defied the laws of physics. According to reports in South American and European newspapers, this forced the pilot to take evasive maneuvers. At the same time, there was a power shortage throughout the winter resort city of Bariloche, which was later blamed on human error, the effects of a snowstorm, or both.There was also a power outage at the airport, which disrupted air traffic for around 10–15 minutes. One Argentine newspaper reported the air traffic control personnel as saying “the control instruments went crazy.” Described as an intense light, the UFO was also seen by personnel on the ground as well as the crew of a gendarmeria (police) plane flying 600 meters (2,000 ft) above.According to pilot Jorge Polanco:At 15 minutes of flight from Bariloche, the control tower normally authorized us to start our landing approach. At the moment when I started the last descent, I suddenly saw a white light which came directly on us at full speed in front of me, before instantly stopping at 100 meters (300 ft). When I started the maneuvers again, the object made an odd turn to accompany our descent turn and to pace us. After a while, the saucer—the size of an airliner—changed color, two green lights appearing at the ends with an orange gleam in the center which ignited intermittently. At the time when I started my last approach, the lights of the track of the airport turned off in a blow. I had to go up to [4,500 meters] by taking an evasive maneuver, still accompanied by the UFO [which] went up at a supernatural speed. After the craft disappeared, Polanco said he spent the next “five minutes in the cabin with my heart throbbing wildly.”

Lake Erie Sightings

In 1995, Cleveland Air Traffic Control received reports from two airline pilots from Air Shuttle Flight 5959 and Mesaba Airlines Flight 3179 about a mysterious light spotted by both crews over Lake Erie: Cleveland Control: Air Shuttle 5959, is that traffic [there] that you saw earlier? Do you see him out there any longer? Air Shuttle 5959: Air Shuttle 5959, that’s affirmative, and it’s a light that kind of . . . it goes dim, and it gets bright. I don’t know if we’re getting closer to it or what? But it looks like a rotating light around it, like a Frisbee-type thing that’s going around it.Unknown voice: UFO.Cleveland Control: Mesaba 3179, do you see the same thing?Mesaba 3179: Ah sir, I saw it coming out of Detroit, and I wondered . . . all I saw was just a couple really bright flashes of light and it almost looked like lightning and it caught my eye. And then I kept watching it and then it looked a little bit less bright. But it looked like it was underneath the cloud deck to me. And this was just as we were coming out of Detroit. The Mesaba pilot even tried to communicate with the object by blinking the lights of his aircraft, but there was no response. Cleveland Control could not detect anything on radar and suggested that the pilots might be seeing the reflection of a beacon. The pilots responded that the light appeared to be pulsing at 3,000 meters (10,000 ft) and that it wasn’t a beacon but was definitely weird.Cleveland expressed an interest in getting a picture of the phenomenon, and the Mesaba pilot delivered:Masaba 3179: I just want you to know that I took a picture, as captain on the left side. I also took (unrecognizable) of some of the stars above, so the lowest light on those pictures. The only single light at the bottom of the picture should be what you’re looking at. And you might be able to get a position with the sky if you want to go that far. Cleveland Control: Ok, great. That’s a good idea, I appreciate that.Masaba 3179: It was an instamatic camera. Good night sir.

Nash-Fortenberry Incident

In 1952, a Pan American World Airways DC-4 was flying on a routine run between Miami and New York. The aircraft was on autopilot with First Officer William B. Nash and Second Officer William H. Fortenberry when a brilliant orange glow appeared near the city of Newport News.Nash later described what they saw:Almost immediately, we perceived that it consisted of six bright objects streaking toward us at tremendous speed and obviously well below us. They had the fiery aspect of hot coals but of much greater glow, perhaps 20 times more brilliant than any of the scattered ground lights over which they passed or the city lights to the right. Their shape was clearly outlined and evidently circular; the edges were well-defined, not phosphorescent or fuzzy in the least, and the red-orange color was uniform over the upper surface of each craft.According to the pilots, the objects appeared to be in an echelon line that was “tilted slightly to our right, with the leader at the lowest point and each following craft slightly higher.” The lead disk slowed suddenly, and two disks following it wavered, as if they hadn’t expected the maneuver. The procession then shot out across the Chesapeake Bay toward the aircraft and performed a new maneuver as Nash and Fortenberry tried to keep eyes on them from the cockpit windows.The objects flipped on edge, appearing to show a coin-like shape. Their bottom halves were not illuminated. The objects were then joined by two more disks before they all shot off to the west in a new formation and performed a maneuver like a ball ricocheting off a wall. The lights of the objects blinked out, only to reappear later at a low altitude over the bay before steeply rising and finally vanishing one by one. Astrophysicist Donald H. Menzel would later offer this theory for the sighting:A temperature inversion can lead to a sharp concentration of haze, ice crystals, smoke, or other particles in a relatively thin layer. [ . . . ] Multiple layers of such haze are not unknown, stacked one on top of the other. A sharply focused searchlight shining at night through a series of such hazy layers will show up as a series of disks. As the searchlight moves, the disks will appear to spread out, exhibit perspective, and, as the searchlight turns around, the disks will appear to ricochet.

BOAC Labrador Incident

In 1954, a British Overseas Airways Corporation Stratocruiser was flying between New York and London when it encountered a large, shape-changing UFO surrounded by smaller objects off the left wing while over Labrador, Canada. At a refueling stop, the crew was questioned by members of the US Air Force, and the encounter became a media sensation.Captain James R. Howard, a former RAF pilot, claimed that the strange formation of objects had followed his aircraft for 130 kilometers (80 mi). Apparently, the objects were also tracked on radar at the USAF Cartwright Air Station in Labrador.Howard gave this report to the British magazine Everybody’s Weekly:It wasn’t exactly a flying saucer. What I saw . . . was more of a flying arrow, I guess you’d have called it at one stage. It seemed to keep changing its shape as it flew beside me, much like a jellyfish assumes varying patterns as it swims through the water. Or maybe the apparent changes in shape were due to the different angles we viewed it from as it banked and turned. [ . . . ] Whatever it was—a giant flying wing, jellyfish, or saucer—of these things I’m quite certain: It wasn’t a trick of light or a figment of the imagination. It wasn’t any sort of electrical, magnetic, or natural phenomenon. And it certainly wasn’t a mirage.Various shapes adopted by the largest object resembled a pear, an arrow, and a telephone receiver.Belgian researcher Wim Van Utrecht suggested that the sighting may have been a large flock of starlings backlit by the setting Sun, which would explain the shape-changing behavior. However, the birds would have been flying at an unusually high altitude. Also, it would have been impossible for starlings to keep pace with the aircraft for the 18 minutes that the alleged object did. US researcher Brad Sparks suggested that there may have been an anomalous bird migration affected by freak climatic conditions.

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