Pilots over southern Arizona encountered something strange last month, according to an FAA recording obtained by The Arizona Republic.
“Was anybody, uh, above us, who passed above us 30 seconds ago?” a pilot asks air traffic control.
“Negative,” the air traffic controller responds.
“Well, something did,” the pilot replies.
Another pilot chimes in that “it was a UFO,” followed by chuckles.
The incident took place the afternoon of Feb. 24 in the skies just north of Tucson.
The pilot who first reported the unidentified object was with Phoenix Air Group, a private aviation company out of Georgia that contracts with the government and private groups.
The pilot wasn’t the only one who saw something.
‘I don’t know what it was’
The Phoenix Air Group pilot and co-pilot saw something very bright in front and above them, company spokesman Bob Tracey said.
They were flying at 37,000 feet and estimated the object was at about 50,000 feet, above the cruising altitude of most airliners. Most airlines are limited to 45,000 feet and at 50,000 feet the earth’s curvature is clearly seen.
The object was too bright for them to make out its shape and it was moving pretty fast, Tracey said. It was going about the same speed a normal jetliner would go, Tracey said the pilot told him.
The whole incident lasted about 30 seconds.
A few minutes later, the air traffic controller reached out to American Airlines 1095, which was flying slightly behind the small jet.
“Let me know if you see anything pass over you here in the next 15 miles,” the controller says to the commercial airline pilot.
“If anything passes over?” the pilot responds inquisitively.
The Phoenix Air Group pilot adds to the radio conversation: “I don’t know what it was, it wasn’t an airplane but it was — the path was going in the opposite direction.”
A few minutes later, the American Airlines pilot tells air traffic control, “Yeah, something just passed right over us,” noting the object was at least 3,000 feet above them.
“I couldn’t make out if it was a balloon or whatnot,” the American Airlines pilot said to the controller. ” but it was just really beaming light or had a big reflection and several thousand feet above us going the opposite direction.”
One pilot asked if it could’ve been one of Google’s Project Loon high-altitude balloons, but the American Airlines pilot said it was “doubtful.”
Was it a balloon?
“We didn’t have any balloons in the area at that time,” Libby Leahy, a spokeswoman for Google’s balloon project said. “Good luck solving the mystery!”
The FAA declined to speculate, but the Phoenix Air Group pilot has an idea.
“He said he has seen lots of balloons with GoPros,” Tracey said his pilot told him.
Amateur videographers, hobbyists and local universities have been known to launch small high-altitude balloons with cameras or other equipment. Something that small would be hard to pick up on radar.
The pilot has been with the company for 15 years and has more than 14,000 hours of flight experience, Tracey said.
The pilot’s primary focus was to alert other aircraft so they didn’t accidentally collide with it, Tracey said.
Tracey said the pilot doesn’t believe in UFOs or “little green men” and a balloon is the likely scenario.
“The sun could’ve been hitting it just right,” Tracey said.
In Brazil, airline pilots have been shouting about the issue of high-altitude balloons being launched near airports, causing lots of near misses, according to the Airline Pilots Association, an international group based in Washington, D.C.
“Some balloons have reportedly made contact with aircraft in flight and in more than one case obstructed flight instrument sensors, causing unreliable air speed and thrust indications, and disrupted autopilot functions, endangering the aircraft,” according to a 2016 article by the association.
Representatives for Luke Air Force Base in Glendale and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico reported no aircraft in the area that afternoon.
Officials from Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson said they do not own any aircraft that can fly at that height. The fact that the pilots identified the objects as not being a plane or a balloon just makes things all the more confusing. Aliens? Maybe.
source: azcentral.com
