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Pilots spot 'UFOs' near the Channel Islands - Wikinews, the free news source

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Thursday, April 26, 2007


Two airline pilots said they witnessed UFOs off the coast of Alderney on Monday.

Ray Bowyer, 50, a captain with Aurigny Air Services, said that during his flight from Southampton, England, at 3 p.m., he saw a bright-yellow light 10 miles west of Alderney in England. His craft at the time was 30 miles away from the island and had an elevation of 4,000ft.

As Bowyer approached Alderney, he noticed another object identical to the first one.

Bowyer, who has been flying commercial aircrafts for about 20 years, said that he did file a report on the incident and did contact air traffic controllers during the incident.

Aerial shot of Alderney (centre) and Burhou (upper right)
Image: Smb1001.

Paul Kelly, 31, who was the Jersey Airport air traffic controller on duty during the incident, said that the airport received simultaneous reports from the Aurigny and Blue Island pilot and that the Blue Island pilot had reported a UFO approximately 1,500ft underneath his plane. Kelly noted that the airport was unable to detect the object on their radar.

John Spencer, deputy chairman of the British UFO Research Association, said: "These types of sightings have been reported by pilots - generally accepted to be reliable and sensible observers - since the 1940s and they have excited attention to this day. Such light effects are often popularly thought to represent alien visitors but many UFO researchers believe they more likely represent natural atmospheric phenomena not yet fully understood by science. However, a similar encounter in 1978 over the Bass Straits in Australia, where the pilot was in radio contact with the ground throughout, resulted in the pilot never being heard from again, so these phenomena are important to study."

Nick Pope, who previously worked for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, said: "While no witnesses are infallible, pilots are trained observers and less likely than most people to misidentify something mundane. The MoD's UFO case files contain several reports from civil and military pilots, some of which were correlated by radar. This is the sort of sighting that is taken seriously and should be investigated thoroughly. While most UFOs can be explained as misidentifications of aircraft, weather balloons, satellites and suchlike, a small percentage are more difficult to explain. This is one of the most intriguing sightings I've heard about in recent years."

The current spokesperson for the UK Ministry of Defence said that they would not be investigating this incident.

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