‘Definitely Not Satellites’: Numerous UFO Sightings Reported by Civilian Pilots Over Canadian Airspace

No less than 18 UFO reports submitted by civilian pilots have been retrieved from Transport Canada’s online aviation incident database, with 17 of the incidents occurring in 2023 alone. These encounters took place in numerous locations across the country and involved air crews from a variety of different airlines, both Canadian-based and from abroad, and include a January 19 incident that involved a two-and-a-half-hour event involving the sighting of at least six anomalous lights by the crews of no less than four separate aircraft over the Canadian Prairies.

These UFO reports were retrieved by Canadian news outlet CTV News through Transport Canada’s Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS); while many of the reports have been outright categorized as “UFO”, a number of them are filed under CIRVIS (Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings), a category typically used for sightings of foreign military ships or aircraft.

A number of reports were given the label of “laser interference”: according to a Transport Canada spokesperson this classification would typically be used in the event that “an aircraft is targeted or reported seeing a laser beam,” but the definition also includes “any other directed bright light source,” such as in the case of a Jan. 4 Aeromexico that encountered “an unusual light pattern in the sky” over New Brunswick.

One standout case involved the reporting of a group of six lights that were spotted by the crews of numerous aircraft over the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the early morning hours of January 19. At approximately 4:20 am a Morningstar Air Express pilot (flight 7062) running cargo from Calgary to Toronto contacted Winnipeg’s James Armstrong Richardson International Airport (CYWG) air traffic control to report “three to four” “active bright lights” at an altitude of about 50,000 feet north of the city, asking if there was any military activity reported in the area; the controller responded that he was unaware of any such scheduled activity.

Ten minutes later, the crew of an Air Canada Airbus A320-211 (flight 7086) en route to Winnipeg chimed in, reporting that they were seeing “flashing lights” that were “forming triangles and then flying away and coming back,” including a “bright light that’s coming towards us” in the same area. Shortly afterward, a Flair Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 (flight 600) making their Vancouver to Toronto run reported that they were seeing the same lights.

Another Air Canada crew (flight 328) reported seeing similar lights in the reported area, but suggested that “it’s just a reflection from the sun,” possibly off of orbiting satellites, although they admitted that their idea was “a wild guess… it really looks quite spectacular and weird the first time.”

Winnipeg reported this idea back to Air Canada 7086, but the pilot dismissed his colleague’s explanation, saying “I’m certainly no expert, but they’re moving side-to-side and then going away from each other and then forming triangles; that doesn’t really seem like they’re in any type of orbit.”

Checking back with Flair 600, Winnipeg discovered that the crew was still witnessing the lights, describing them as “quite bizarre. There’s around six of them just randomly in formation flying at a high altitude” ahead of their position. They also reported that they had “been staring at these things for well over an hour, and they’re high up in this sky,” at an altitude of “100,000 feet plus.”

“Definitely not satellites,” remarked Morningstar 7062. She went on to say that the lights were “unlike anything I’ve ever seen in like the 15 years of night flying that I’ve done.”

Flair 600 also offered their observations of the lights for the CIRVIS report that was to be submitted by the controller in Winnipeg.

“Multiple different points of light would be the way we would describe this. Sometimes there were three, sometimes there were six, sometimes there’s just some individual lights just flying at random intervals,” the crew reported, regarding how many lighter were observed. “There’s no specific numbers, so to speak.” They also noted that the altitude of the lights was “anywhere between 70,000 feet all the way to 100” thousand feet. They also reported that the lights’ movement was “random, all over the place.”

“At times I saw three, three lights in a triangle formation, just flying in a random movement up and down, left, right, all over the place” while “moving at a very fast pace and all directions, very, very high speed.”

The mystery deepened when the crew of Cargojet flight 937 reported that although they hadn’t seen the lights during this event, they had been “seeing those lights for probably the last 18 months or so… over the prairies, just like Flair [600] said,” but only on their eastbound leg and always in the same area. “It’s kind of been in that area for quite a while.”

Another crew from Westjet flight 520 added that they had been seeing the same lights “with three or four like that over the last month or so.”

“I’ve never seen them eastbound, only westbound,” Westjet 520 continued. “And yeah, same thing too, movement all over: sometimes they make a triangle, sometimes they make a diamond and square. They’re bright and they just appear all over.”

“Sure be nice to get answers on that, for sure,” Cargojet 937 responded.

A condensed version of the conversation between CYWG and the crews of the six aircraft can be listened to on YouTube.

The sightings were reported to the Canadian Air Defence Sector of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) at 4:40 that morning, according to a January 23 report posted on the CADORS website. However, the Canadian military stated that it does “not typically investigate sightings of unknown or unexplained phenomena outside the context of investigating credible threats, potential threats, or potential distress in the case of search and rescue.”

It is also unlikely that Canadian civilian authorities will be able to investigate the matter as “reports of unidentified objects can rarely be followed up on as they are as the title implies, unidentified,” according to a Transport Canada spokesperson. “The department is reviewing the circumstances of this incident and will take appropriate action if non-compliance with the regulations is identified.”