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.

NOTE: This news story, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.

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