FAA Releases New Recordings of a UFO Sighting by an Airline Crew

Audio recordings detailing a recent UFO incident involving commercial airliners have been obtained by The Warzone from the Federal Aviation Administration. The sighting took place over New Mexico on February 24, 2018, and involved the crews of at least two aircraft, belonging to American Airlines and Phoenix Air, with at least one crewmember on each aircraft describing the object as "a UFO".

Somewhere between 3:30pm and 4:15pm MST, the crew of an eastbound Phoenix Air Learjet 36 traveling at 37,000 feet, contacted Albuquerque Center air traffic control, inquiring as to whether or not control knew of another aircraft that they spotted passing above them. The controller replied "negative," as their radar hadn’t picked anything else up in their vicinity, to which one of the pilots responded "somethin’ did," with his colleague chiming in, "a UFO."

Control then contacted American Airlines flight 1095, an Airbus A321 traveling just behind the Learjet, to ask them to report in if they spot anything traveling above them. The Airbus crew were surprised by the request, as they were already traveling just under maximum cruising altitude. The Learjet crew then offered more detail: "I don’t know what it was, it wasn’t an airplane but it was–the path was going in the opposite direction."

It didn’t take the Airbus crew long to report back: "Yeah something just passed over us, like a–I don’t know what it was, but it was at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah it passed right over the top of us."

Control then asks, "Could you tell if it was in motion or if it was just hovering?" The Airbus crew replies "I couldn’t make it out if it was a balloon or whatnot, but it was just really beaming light or had a big reflection and several thousand feet above us going the opposite direction."

At one point, someone cuts in to ask whether or not the object was a Google balloon, referring to Google’s Project Loon, an aerial wireless network that Google is developing that employs high-altitude balloons. The Airbus crew responds "doubtful," and "a UFO!" Project Loon’s balloons are deployed at a much higher altitude, roughly 60,000 feet, and if the object was traveling in the direction opposite to the airliners’ flight paths, it would be moving against an 80-knot (95mph) wind.

This is the second such release regarding a documented UFO encounter by the FAA this year, following a story published by The Warzone in February regarding an even more complex encounter along the west coast that took place last fall. It’s difficult to say as to whether or not we are currently experiencing an increase in UFO activity, or if the admission by the DoD last year that UFOs are a legitimate phenomenon has lifted a long-standing taboo on discussing the issue amongst aviation professionals.