by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
The FAA has been historically close-mouthed when it comes to pilot UFO sightings and pilots often avoid filing official reports, as they can be damaging to one’s career. However, with the availability of live air traffic control feeds such as liveatc.net, listeners have occasionally come upon pilots talking about a sighting in real time. This recently happened to the operator of the YouTube site, Flight Simulator Fantasy, who posted a short containing the audio in mid-February. Given the nature of the site, the audio is most likely genuine.
The posting on F.S.F. received limited news coverage. There is an article by Tom McGhie posted February 28, 2024, on the website of The Daily Star headlined “American Airlines Pilot’s Chilling UFO Radio Call as Mystery Craft “Went 180” in Seconds.” The article contains information from the F.S.F. site, including transcripts of key moments where the pilots describe what they’re seeing. According to McGhie, the news outlet reached out to Harrisburg Airport, the flight’s destination, for comment.
The best information comes from the posting. While YouTube postings are always suspect, this site is devoted to flight simulation and in the instance of the posting, the operator was using Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 with a live ATC feed. In a small window showing an A.A. American Eagle (an Embraer ERJ-145) over an image of the area with a flight tracking graphic, there is the date, February 12, 2024, over the departure and destination locations of Boston and Harrisburg. The flight tracker shows the flight number as AA5795 and a check using FlightAware showed that the flight departed the gate at Boston’s Logan International Airport at 6:30 p.m. and arrived at Harrisburg International Airport at 8:16 p.m. The plane is identified as an Embraer ERJ-145.
The of description the sighting is extraordinary. The pilot, in a British accent, says “Well, you’re going to think I’m crazy – There’s something that just went from right to left to right again in a blink and then flashed his lights three or four times and vanished.” The air traffic controller responds, saying he had an aircraft cross from right to left, which he identifies as E175, and says another one, 777 “high off the right side, that’s descended to 28. That might be those two aircraft. I’m not sure.” The pilot says “Uh, this thing went 180 degrees in like, a second.” The air traffic controller says “Oh, goodness. All right. Let me know if you see it again. We’ll make a report.”
According to the Star, a second pilot from the same plane adds more details, but this writer believes it’s the same pilot speaking in a higher pitch because he’s excited. He says, “Well, the detail, it literally went from one coast to the other in front of us and then, it went up like 30 degrees, turned off its lights, or whatever it had. It looked like it was a bright orangey thing and then, since we spoke to you last, it’s flashed us like, three or four times. We are still looking at it now.”
A different traffic controller comes on and asks “So, where is it roughly if I was to give you a traffic call?” The pilot says “I would say probably 80 – 60 – 80 miles in front of us. And it looks like it’s coming – I dunno – it’s flashing towards us. But, it is definitely not an airplane. It doesn’t have the strobe lights or anything like – it’s just this bright orange going on and off. Yep, this definitely wasn’t an airplane.”
There is another instance on the F.S.F. site of a pilot UFO sighting recorded on February 28, 2024. The posting is titled, “Flying Too Fast to be a Balloon Pilot Spots UFO While Flying in New Jersey.” The is a picture of a small private plane over an image of the area. The pilot asks the controller if he has anything on his scope and says something “flew right beside us about a minute ago, probably about 200 feet away.” The controller responds and addresses the pilot as “November 2, 5, Fox, R, Golf, Negative” and says the closest traffic he’s seeing is 7 miles away at 1 o’clock “opposite direction at 4000 feet.” The pilot describes the object as shiny and chrome and says it flew right by them. The controller says, “Okay, so, possibly a UAS?” and the pilot responds saying “What I would consider it, yes.”
The controller asks if the pilot was able to get a good look at it and asks if it “was like a quadcopter or some sort of like, a, uh, like an aircraft looking UAS?” The pilot says he saw no wings or rotors and that it was “shiny, round, and chrome.” The controller suggests it was a balloon and the pilot immediately says “It was flying too fast to be a balloon.”
The controller asks for a size estimate for the “UAS or, uh, UAP” and the pilot says “We were just discussing that. I was thinking like, probably around the size of like, a bathtub for 205 Foxtrot Golf.” The controller asks, “You said a bathtub?” and the pilot says “Correct.”
So, while the media coverage of the first report was somewhat cursory, and the second report was neglected altogether, at least we’ve been alerted to a potential source for future reports.
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