by Leslie Kean
The second impact that UAP can have on aviation safety is to affect the proper functioning of navigation guidance equipment, flight control systems, radar operations, and radio communication with interference from its alleged electromagnetic radiation. Obviously, in situations where pilots rely on their instruments, the probability of an incident or accident increases when anomalous electromagnetic effects cause them to malfunction. Fortunately, in most of these instances, equipment resumes normal functioning after the object departs.
Finally, cockpit distractions produced by close encounters with UAP divert the attention of the crew and can impair their ability to fly the airplane safely. It is understandable that witnessing bizarre objects or unexplained lights pacing beside an airplane, or flying circles around it, would be disconcerting to anyone on board, especially those responsible for passenger safety.
The information I’ve collected to document cases of UAP affecting aviation safety comes from my extensive database. It consists of pilot and air traffic control reports drawn from official U.S. and other government sources, private interviews, and reports by international colleagues who have worked closely with the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP). According to our statistics, in an average career of commercial flying, a pilot has about the same chance of seeing a UAP as he does of striking a bird in flight or of encountering extreme wind shear. The threat to safety is small but potentially significant, and should be treated like any other infrequent safety hazard. Many flight safety problems go unreported or underreported, but the difference here is that bird strikes and wind shear are currently acceptable events to report and UAP are not.
Three cases over Australia and New Zealand are of great interest, illustrating the effects I’m referring to. On August 22, 1968, at about 5:40 p.m., two pilots were flying from Adelaide to Perth, Australia, at 8,000 feet in a Piper Navajo single-engine airplane when they sighted a very large cigar-shaped object surrounded by five smaller objects. The strange formation maintained a constant angle from their own flight path for over ten minutes, while they flew at 195 knots. One of the pilots said later, “The large one opened up in its center with smaller objects going to and from the larger object.” Ground air traffic control was contacted and replied that there was no known air traffic in the area. At this point their radio failed on all frequencies until the objects flew away, “as if by a single command.”3
Ten years later, a shocking event occurred. A private pilot went missing while en route to King Island, south of Melbourne, Australia, after a very close and frightening encounter with a large unknown object. On October 21, 1978, twenty-year-old Frederick Valentich had rented a Cessna 182L single-engine, propeller-driven airplane for a short night flight. Just after 9:00 p.m., he radioed Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne from an altitude of 4,500 feet while over the waters of Bass Strait. For six and a half minutes, he conversed with flight service specialist Steve Robey at the Melbourne airport about something unidentified orbiting around his airplane, heading straight for him, and chasing him. The tape ended with fourteen seconds of very unusual metallic noises and then went silent.
The voice transcript between Robey at Flight Service in Melbourne and Valentich in his Cessna aircraft—which was registered and referred to as Delta Sierra Juliet—follows. I have carefully studied the audiotape and noted the many times where Valentich’s voice inflections rise at the end of his transmissions, as if he were asking a question. The young pilot was clearly disoriented by 9:10 p.m. at the latest and probably earlier. There are many pauses during his transmissions, which are indicated by three ellipsis points.
9:06:14 Valentich: Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below five thousand?
9:06:23 Robey: Delta Sierra Juliet—no known traffic.
9:06:26 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—I am—seems [to] be a large aircraft below five thousand.
9:06:46 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—What type of aircraft is it?
9:06:50 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—I cannot affirm. It is four bright … it seems to me like landing lights.
9:07:04 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:07:32 V: Melbourne, this [is] Delta Sierra Juliet. The aircraft has just passed over me at least a thousand feet above.
9:07:43 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger—and it, it is a large aircraft—confirm?
9:07:47 V: Er, unknown due to the speed it’s travelling … Is there any Air Force aircraft in the vicinity?
9:07:57 R: Delta Sierra Juliet. No known aircraft in the vicinity.
9:08:18 V: Melbourne—it’s approaching now from due east—towards me.
9:08:28 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:08:49 V: Delta Sierra Juliet. It seems to me that he’s playing some sort of game—he’s flying over me two—three times at a time at speeds I could not identify.
9:09:02 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger. What is your actual level?
9:09:06 V: My level is four and a half thousand, four five zero zero.
9:09:11 R: Delta Sierra Juliet … And confirm—you cannot identify the aircraft.
9:09:14 V: Affirmative.
9:09:18 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger … Standby.
9:09:28 V: Melbourne—Delta Sierra Juliet. It’s not an aircraft … It is …
9:09:46 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Melbourne. Can you describe the … er, aircraft?
9:09:52 V: Delta Sierra Juliet … as it’s flying past it’s a long shape … [cannot] identify more than that. It has such speed … It is before me right now, Melbourne?
9:10:07 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger. And how large would the, er, object be?
9:10:20 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—Melbourne. It seems like it’s chasing me. What I’m doing right now is orbiting, and the thing is just orbiting on top of me also … It’s got a green light and sort of metallic [like]. It’s all shiny [on] the outside.
9:10:43 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:10:48 V: Delta Sierra Juliet … it’s just vanished.
9:10:57 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:11:03 V: Melbourne, would you know what kind of aircraft I’ve got? It is [a type of] military aircraft?
9:11:08 R: Delta Sierra Juliet. Confirm the … er, aircraft just vanished.
9:11:14 V: Say again.
9:11:17 R: Delta Sierra Juliet. Is the aircraft still with you?
9:11:23 V: Delta Sierra Juliet … It’s, ah … [now] approaching from the southwest.
9:11:37 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:11:52 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—the engine is, is rough idling. I’ve got it set at twenty-three—twenty-four … and the thing is—coughing. [Engine trouble is audible on the audio tape.]
9:12:04 R: Delta Sierra Juliet—Roger. What are your intentions?
9:12:09 V: My intentions are—ah … to go to King Island—ah, Melbourne, that strange aircraft is hovering on top of me again … it is hovering and it’s not an aircraft.
9:12:22 R: Delta Sierra Juliet.
9:12:28 V: Delta Sierra Juliet—Melbourne …
[A pause for seventeen seconds during which a very strange, metallic-sounding pulsed noise is audible, with no discernable pattern in time or frequency.]
9:12:49 R: Delta Sierra Juliet, Melbourne.
End of transcript.
Valentich was never heard from again.
Valentich’s description of “a green light and sort of metallic like, all shiny on the outside” is important. In the years following the event, a colleague obtained reports from twenty eyewitnesses in the region, describing an erratically moving green light in the sky at that same time of evening as Valentich’s flight. Years later, I traveled to the resort town of Apollo Bay, Australia, and interviewed Ken Hansen4 who was forty-seven at the time of the incident in 1978, and his two nieces. Hansen was driving with the two girls when they noticed, in the sky above, the lights from a plane along with a large green light. The presence of that second light was so unusual that Hansen decided to pull over, stop, and get out of his automobile
. He said that when he did so, he clearly saw a second large, greenish, circular light “like it was riding on top of the airplane.” Its visual size, as he described it, was equivalent to that of a tennis ball held at arm’s length, with a ratio between it and the plane of about four to one. Assuming this estimation is accurate, the UFO would be about forty-eight feet across. Its green color was similar to the navigation lights on an airplane. Hansen noticed that it kept a constant distance above and slightly behind the airplane’s lights, while he watched for about fifteen to twenty seconds, until both lights disappeared from sight.
He told his wife that evening about the large green light, as well as his coworkers the next day, before he knew anything about what Valentich had reported. When we met, his nieces confirmed the details provided by their uncle. I was able to obtain much valuable information by going to the site with Hansen where he had pulled over in his car, because he reconstructed for us what he saw.
The story of Valentich’s encounter with a UFO and subsequent disappearance was reported by the media throughout the world, garnering much attention. Despite the coordinated efforts of private pilots and the Australian government’s search-and-rescue airplanes, no trace of him or his airplane has ever been found. There is sufficient evidence to suggest that he probably crashed into the sea between three and twelve miles offshore, but we will likely never know what happened. The nature of the large object with green lights that accompanied the airplane during its last minutes remains even more of a mystery.5
About two months later, a remarkable aerial sighting was documented over New Zealand. Captain Bill Startup, a senior pilot working for Safe Air Ltd. with twenty-three years of experience and 14,000 hours of flying time, and his copilot Robert Guard, with 7,000 hours of flying time, were key witnesses. The Argosy freight plane they piloted was making a newspaper delivery between Wellington and Christchurch off the Kaikoura coast of South Island. Australian television reporter Quentin Fogarty from Channel O in Melbourne, Australia, his cameraman David Crockett, and sound operator Ngaire Crockett were also on board, because UAP had been witnessed by aircrews and picked up by radar about ten days earlier along the same route. Fogarty was making a television documentary about these earlier events, partly because of heightened interest in UFOs after the Valentich disappearance. He wanted background footage for his documentary, so he joined the newspaper delivery on December 30–31, 1978, for this purpose. He never expected to witness any strange phenomena himself.
But just after midnight on that flight, a series of light phenomena appeared, escorted the aircraft, and flew around it. Captain Startup and copilot Guard, who were well aware of the regular, very familiar lights along the coast, were the first to notice the strange lights ahead of them. For about thirty minutes, cameraman Crockett captured the luminous objects on 16 mm color movie film, while Fogarty commented on camera, as the events unfolded. At the same time, on-board systems and air traffic control in Wellington, New Zealand, tracked the objects on radar while they were viewed by Captain Startup and others aboard. The radar readings were reported to the pilots by air traffic controller Geoffrey Causer, and witnessed on the scope also by radar maintenance technician Bryan Chalmers. Causer remained in constant communication with the pilots throughout the incident, and the entire dialogue was recorded on tape.
I have viewed the film of these unusual images—showing bright lights in and out of focus, some round, some suggestive of a disc shape—which has also been carefully analyzed by others. The lights disappeared and reappeared in totally new locations, sometimes several at a time. Their behavior cannot be explained by normal aerophysics.
At one point, witnesses in the plane observed lights flying in formation with the aircraft. They then heard from air traffic control that the phenomenon was so close to the plane that the radar scope could not separate the two. Causer registered only one signal on the radar screen, but it was twice as big as it had been before. “There’s a strong target right in formation with you. Could be right or left. Your target has doubled in size,” he reported. Chalmers also viewed the double-size target. It appeared as if two planes were flying at the same speed so close to each other that they were indistinguishable on radar. Such proximity could of course be a threat to aviation safety, but this aircraft suffered no ill effects.6
These are unusual cases. Shorter events involving near misses are more common. On August 8, 1994, a commercial flight en route from Acapulco, Guerrero, to Mexico City, Mexico, almost collided with a UAP that darted out of a cloud straight toward the aircraft. Fortunately, the UAP maneuvered to avoid the collision. A Japanese Transocean Air Boeing 737 commercial airliner was on route from Okinawa Prefecture to Tokyo at cruising speed on November 11, 1998, when the first officer suddenly saw two white “strobe lights” in front of him. The two lights separated rapidly, and he made a dive to avoid a collision.7 In these two cases, neither object was detected by ground radar. In 2004, during the sunny afternoon approach of a commercial flight to Brazil’s São Paulo airport, both crew members saw a self-luminous sphere ahead of them that remained at their altitude as they descended. The twin turboprop airplane had to bank sharply and dive to avoid a collision.
In America, the case of Captain Phil Schultz is exceptional—one that I personally investigated. I interviewed the captain extensively and received a six-page, handwritten Aerial Sighting Report from him.
Captain Schultz was piloting TWA flight 842 from San Francisco to John F. Kennedy Airport over Lake Michigan one bright clear summer day in 1981. Suddenly he saw a “large, round, silver metal object” with six jet-black “portholes” equally spaced around the circumference, which quickly “descended into the atmosphere from above.” Captain Schultz and his copilot were so close to the object that it appeared as large as a grapefruit held at arm’s length. Expecting a midair collision, they braced themselves for impact. The object then made a sharp, high-speed turn, avoiding the aircraft, and departed.
Schultz did not file a report with TWA, but instead worked diligently with me to accurately reconstruct the event in the cockpit of his aircraft. This allowed me to ascertain many important facts about the event. Its approach and departure speed was calculated to be about 1,000 mph, with a high G turn, as well. No shock wave or turbulence was felt at any time. The aircraft’s autopilot remained coupled throughout the encounter, and no electromagnetic effects were noticed. The first officer saw the final two-thirds of the event, but the flight engineer did not see anything as a result of his position in the rear of the cabin. Chicago Center had no other air traffic in the area, although their radar at the time had a range of about 150 miles.
My sketch of the cockpit windows and apparent size, shape, location, and flight path of the UAP seen by Captain Schultz. R. Haines
With extensive experience as a U.S. Navy fighter pilot in the Korean War and afterward, Captain Shultz never accepted the reality of UFOs prior to this incident. This encounter instantly changed his belief. When I asked him what he thought the object was, he quickly replied, “There is no doubt in my mind. It was an extraterrestrial craft.” He said as much in his handwritten report that he filled out for me, saying he believed the thing was a “spaceship.”8
Also in America, a very puzzling, low-altitude, in-flight apparent collision occurred on October 23, 2002, just northeast of Mobile, Alabama, according to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) accident report. En route from Mobile to Montgomery, Thomas Preziose, fifty-four, with 4,000 total flight hours to his credit, was piloting alone, carrying about 420 pounds of paper records cargo. He took off for this flight at 7:40 p.m. The preliminary accident report stated that the Cessna 208B, a Cargomaster with the FAA registration number N76U—a high-wing, single-engine commercial airplane—“collided in-flight with an unknown object [italics mine] at 3,000 feet and descended uncontrolled into swampy water in the Big Bateau Bay in Spanish Fort, Alabama.”9 The crash occurred about six minutes after take-off, at approximately 7:46 p.m. Interestingly, the
NTSB saw fit to issue a later report that did not mention the collision with an unknown object.
Based on data from an automated surface-observing system 7.7 miles from the accident site, recorded at 6:53 p.m., there was a layer of scattered clouds at 700 feet and a more solid overcast beginning at 1,200 feet with clear air in between, and a visibility of five miles. The wind was 11 knots at 60 degrees. It may be significant to this fatal accident to note that a DC-10 passed about 1,000 feet above the Cessna after approaching him from about his eleven-o’clock position at 7:45—seconds before the crash—and would have produced wing-tip vortex turbulence.10 Afterward, the pilot uttered his final words before his death: “Night Ship 282, I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed to deviate, I needed—” (end of transmission at 7:45:57 p.m.).
If Preziose collided with a physical object, it was never located. Yet a strange red residue (referred to as “transfer marks”) was found coating at least fourteen different areas of the downed airplane that were widely separated in location both inside and outside the aircraft. The engine block had been split, suggesting a very great force of impact. Unfortunately, radar data recording hardware was inoperative at the time of the accident, yet the NTSB did not request radar data from the Pensacola Naval Air Station, less than an hour away. The DC-10 that passed over the Cessna just before the crash was inspected upon landing, and no damage of any kind was found.
The final NTSB report indicated that the accident was caused by pilot disorientation. However, an independent investigation found numerous discrepancies with regard to both the FAA documentation and the investigation conducted by the NTSB.11
