Investigator Nick Redfern
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The Western Daily Press of Bristol, England has reported that
there have been around 30 near misses with UFOs at Britain?s
major airports, incidents that came close to bringing down
jets that were loaded with passengers. The newspaper
uncovered Civil Aviation Authority files detailing these
incidents that are now in the possession of U.K. author Nick
Redfern.
They documents pilots? and air traffic controllers? descriptions
of unidentified flying objects which almost collided with jets.
CAA spokesman Chris Mason says, ?Our reports are from
highly trained pilots and air traffic controllers. We have no
argument with what they say they have seen, even if what
they saw can't be explained. We admit that in some cases
the [objects] which were nearly in collision with the aircraft
have never been traced. We keep an open mind about UFOs.
Some things just can't be explained, but they have been
reported by top professionals and we do take that into
account.?
The CAA has been carefully and quietly collecting and
analyzing data pertaining to near-collisions between airliners
and UFOs for a number of years. ?I've never seen anything
like it before and can?t explain what it was,? said British
Airways pilot Mike Dalton, about his sighting of a large, silver
disc-shaped object from his Boeing 737 on a flight from Rome
to Gatwick on the night of November 5, 1990. ?My copilot and
I called in two cabin crew to see it and then it went out of
sight. Ground radar couldn?t pick it up, so it must have been
traveling at phenomenal speed.? Subsequent investigations
determined the UFO had been seen by a second British
Airways pilot, as well as the pilot of an Royal Air Force plane
who had to take ?violent evasive action? to avoid a collision
with it.
On the night of April 21, 1991, at 9 p.m., Captain Achille
Zaghetti, who was piloting
a McDonnell MD-80 aircraft, was amazed to see an
unidentified flying object pass his aircraft as it flew over the
coast of Kent at a height of more than 22,000 feet. Since the
UFO was no more than 1,000 feet above the airliner, the
incident was classed as a ?near-miss,? and an official inquiry
was initiated by the CAA. Approximately two weeks later they
issued the following statement: ?The pilot said the object
was light brown, round,
three meters [9 feet] long, and did not describe any means of
propulsion. Extensive inquiries have failed to provide any
indication of what the sighting may have been.?
The next incident took place on June 1, 1991, when a ten-
foot-long, yellow-orange cylindrical object was seen up close
by the crew of a Britannia Airways Boeing 737 en route to
London from Dublin. Sixteen days later, another cylindrical-
shaped UFO was sighted, this time by Walter Leiss, a German
engineer aboard Dan Air flight DA 4700 as it headed toward
Hamburg.
On January 6, 1995, Captain Roger Wills and copilot Mark
Stuart were beginning their
descent towards Manchester Airport in a Boeing 737 twin jet
with 60 passengers on board. Seventeen minutes before
touchdown, a mysterious, triangular-shaped UFO flashed past
the right-hand side of the aircraft. It was described as
being ?very close??so close, in fact, that the crew
instinctively ducked down in their seats.
This is an extract from the conversation between crew of the
B737 and the radar controller. B737: ?We just had something
go down the RHS just above us very fast.?
MANCHESTER: ?Well, there?s nothing seen on the radar. Was
it an aircraft??
B737: ?Well, it had lights; it went down the starboard side
very quick [and] just slightly above us, yeah.?
MANCHESTER: ?Keep an eye out for something, I can't see
anything at all at the moment so, must have been very fast
or gone down very quickly after it passed you I
think.?
Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan has also interviewed
Mexican pilots on his TV show ?Sixty Minutes? who have
reported UFO near misses, including one who had damage to
the landing gear of his plane. A Russian airport was
completely shut down for an hour and a half in January of
2001 due to a UFO hovering at the end of the runway.
Whether or not UFO activity is implicated in any unexplained
air crashes remains unknown.
Thanks to the Western Daily
Press and Nick Redfern for this story. To access the
Western Daily Press's report, click on their News Search
button and input the search word CAA into the search
engine, with the date 15/06/2001 and limit the search to
Western Daily Press.
To learn more about Nick Redfern and his work,
click here.
