UFOs Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (8 page)

CHAPTER 3

Pilots: A Unique Window into the Unknown

T
he Belgian UFOs did not appear to create any kind of safety hazard for aircraft in flight, as far as we know, and General De Brouwer made it clear that the objects displayed no threatening behavior. Yet, as I stated in the second point to be considered in the Introduction, this is not always the case. Some of our most compelling reports on UFO encounters have been provided by Air Force and commercial pilots, and sometimes aviation safety is compromised.

Shortly after publishing my first story about the COMETA Report in the
Boston Globe
, I became interested in the question of UFOs and aviation safety. After all, if these things really are out there, one would expect that at least
some
pilots would see dazzling light displays while flying at night, or maybe giant triangles in the daytime, or metallic discs speeding by the cockpit window. In fact, wouldn’t they be more likely to see them than anyone else? Perhaps passengers might even be at risk if they found themselves too close to an unpredictable unidentified flying object. One could easily imagine that witnessing such a thing at 35,000 feet—something with no wings but much faster and more agile than the lumbering jet aircraft holding one prisoner—must be considerably more unnerving than viewing the same object with one’s feet safely planted on the ground. But beyond simply seeing one, could they be dangerous?

Much to my amazement, I quickly discovered that a ninety-page report dealing with this very question had just been released by the world’s most qualified researcher of pilot encounters with UFOs. Even better, I recognized that this well-documented scientific study could serve as the “news hook” for another story, in the same way that the COMETA Report had done before. “Aviation Safety in America—A Previously Neglected Factor” by Dr. Richard Haines, a retired senior research scientist from NASA Ames Research Center and former chief of NASA’s Space Human Factors Branch, was a mind-boggling study, with more than fifty pages of case summaries involving pilots and their crews.
¹
That “neglected factor,” of course, referred to unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP.
²

The report featured over one hundred cases of pilot encounters with a variety of these UAP, including fifty-six near misses, all affecting the safety of aircraft. Most cases involved multiple witnesses, and many were backed by ground radio communications and radar corroboration. Experienced pilots presented accounts of objects, ranging from silver discs to green fireballs, flying loops around passenger aircraft, pacing alongside despite pilots’ evasive attempts, or flooding cockpits with blinding light. Dr. Haines documented cases of electromagnetic effects on aircraft navigation and operating systems linked to nearby UFOs, or a pilot’s sudden dive to avoid a collision. He wrote that a crew’s ability to perform its duties safely is disrupted when crew members are faced with “extremely bizarre, unexpected and prolonged luminous and/or solid phenomena cavorting near their aircraft.” The danger posed by the phenomenon in flight lies more with the human response to it than from the actions of the UAP itself, because the objects do not appear to be aggressive or hostile, and seem to be able to avoid collisions by executing last-minute high-speed turns in a flash.

Dr. Haines, who has authored more than seventy papers in leading scientific journals and published over twenty-five U.S. government reports for NASA, specialized in human performance, technology design, and human-computer interaction while at NASA. Having contributed to the U.S. Gemini and Apollo projects, as well as Skylab and Space Station, in 1988 he retired from his twenty-one years as a senior aerospace scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. Subsequently he worked as a senior research scientist for the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science, RECOM Technologies, Inc., and Raytheon Corp. at NASA Ames Research Center until 2001.

Haines unexpectedly became interested in the UFO subject back in the 1960s, when he was conducting research involving flight simulators for NASA. As he explains it, commercial pilots would volunteer to come into his facility and fly the simulators for studies on aviation safety, avionics, and many other areas. “From time to time a pilot would offer to tell me about an experience he had that just blew me away,” Haines said in a 2009 interview.
³
Although he had heard of UFOs at the time, he had absolutely no interest in them. “I heard more and more stories from these very credible witnesses, so it began to catch my attention. I said to myself, ‘I can explain these things; they’re all natural phenomena or misidentified phenomena within the human eye,’ which I knew a lot about from studying human vision and optics. So I set out as a skeptic to disprove the whole thing. But the more I looked into the subject seriously, the more convinced I became that there was something there. Something that deserved to be looked at. Yet none of my colleagues were doing so.” He then started systematically collecting data and eyewitness reports, and giving a great deal of thought to the analysis, and has been doing so ever since. Today, he has developed an international database of over 3,400 firsthand UFO sightings by commercial, military, and private pilots, with special attention to cases where aviation safety is compromised, as distinct from sightings during which the objects have no effect on an aircraft or its crew.

In fact, for years, he and his associates have been attempting to alert the aviation community to the effects of unknown aerial phenomena on aircraft safety. In 2001, along with executive director Ted Roe, he established the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena
⁴
(NARCAP), a respected international nonprofit research organization serving also as a confidential reporting center for use by pilots, crew, and air traffic controllers who are otherwise afraid to make reports of sightings. NARCAP scientists collect and analyze high-quality data to further understand the fundamental nature of all kinds of unidentified aerial phenomena that may pose a threat to aviation safety. The group’s technical and science advisors with extensive aviation and aeronautic experience from about a dozen countries, along with other specialists ranging from geophysicists and research psychologists to meteorologists and astrophysicists, contribute research and publish “Technical Reports” on the group’s website.

I have been privileged to come to know Dr. Haines, and he invited me to sit in on a number of private NARCAP annual meetings over the years, the last one being in July 2008. I was honored to meet many of these dedicated professionals, who are doing an outstanding job despite the obstacles they face. Papers and ongoing research are presented at these round-table gatherings, and strategies are discussed for acquiring greater accessibility to the aviation community, making sure that NARCAP remains distinct from activist UFO groups where aviation safety is obviously not the focus and where a rigorous scientific approach is less often employed.

Nonetheless, the group’s efforts to bring this issue into the scientific arena and aviation community have fallen on deaf ears. “There is little doubt in my mind that no amount of rational discussion about the substantiated evidence of the presence and behavior of UAP in our skies is going to quickly overcome the impact on two generations of Americans repeatedly told otherwise: that the subject of UAP should, at best, be cast into the category of folklore and, at worst, viewed as somehow harmful propaganda,” Dr. Haines commented recently in an e-mail. “But we must keep working toward the goal of accepting the truth when and where we find it. To do anything less is to set ourselves up for a possibly dangerous future.”

Beyond the legitimate efforts to confront safety issues, I became intrigued by the absolutely crucial and central role pilots can play in simply documenting these mysterious and elusive UFOs, whether safety is a factor or not, since they represent the world’s most experienced and best-trained observers of everything that flies. Able to rapidly identify and respond to anything that would endanger a flight, pilots are required to have practical knowledge of all other aircraft, military test flights, and other special air activities such as missile tests, as well as unusual weather and natural phenomena. Professional pilots are highly qualified to recognize a true anomaly as distinct from any of these. What better source for data on UFOs is there? The aviation world is in a position to provide information that could greatly increase knowledge about the UFO phenomenon, if only our scientists wanted to take advantage of it.

These professionals spend countless hours behind a unique window into miles of usually empty sky, a perfect platform for observing exceptional details about the behavior and physical appearance of UFOs when they appear. Pilots might be able to precisely determine the distance and velocity of the anomaly, as well as its relative size, which is more difficult to estimate from the ground. They could also document the transitory impact of electromagnetic fields on cockpit equipment, providing potentially useful clues as to the nature of any radiation from the object. Able to remain calm and focused during unexpected stressful situations, pilots can report accurately and precisely on events outside, using on-board radar and communications with air traffic control with its ground radars to home in on the object. Nearby aircraft could be contacted and asked to head for the area, or military jets could be launched if the encounter was prolonged. And—of great interest to all of us—crew members would be able to take outstanding photographs and videos of the lengthier encounters. These unique circumstances potentially transform any jet aircraft into a specialized flying laboratory for the study of rare anomalous phenomena. Important evidence of UFOs has been obtained this way in many powerful cases since the 1950s, not only raising concerns about safety, but also adding greatly to the historical record.

Pilots are among the least likely of any group of witnesses to fabricate or exaggerate reports of strange sightings. But unfortunately, as things stand now, most would prefer never to be confronted with the dilemma of seeing a UFO and having to decide whether to report it. According to Haines, reporting on the presence of UAP
has
been enough to threaten some pilots’ careers, and for this reason, most choose not to do so.

Neil Daniels, a United Airlines captain for thirty-five years,
⁵
with more than 30,000 hours of flying time and an Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross, was one of those pilots who feared reporting his sighting, despite the physical effect experienced by his airplane. In 1977, he, his copilot, and a flight engineer observed a perfectly round, “brilliant, brilliant light off the wing tip,” as he described it, about 1,000 yards away from their United DC-10, which was en route to Boston Logan from San Francisco. While flying on autopilot, the passenger plane was forced into an uncommanded left turn, apparently pulled by the object’s magnetic interference, prompting Boston Center to ask, “United 94, where are you going?” Captain Daniels replied, “Well, let me figure this out. I’ll let you know.”

The captain and his first officer then noticed that their three compasses were all reading different headings, and at that point they deliberately uncoupled the autopilot and flew the airplane manually. (Haines points out that the magnetic sensor providing the input to the compass then controlling the autopilot was the one located nearest to the UAP.) The powerful light followed along with the aircraft at the same altitude for several minutes, and then took off rapidly and disappeared.

Captain Daniels said that the luminous object shot away so swiftly that he does not understand how it could possibly be a man-made machine. But no matter what it was, he says, “it did cause a disruption in the magnetic field around the aircraft to the point where it pulled the aircraft off course.”

Neither Daniels nor any of his crew reported the incident. The air traffic controllers did not ask further questions about the disturbance to his flight. It was as if everyone wanted to pretend that nothing had happened, but Daniels could not forget what he had seen with his own eyes. Seven months later, while duck hunting with his United Airlines boss, he had a momentary change of heart and decided to tell him the story. Unfortunately, he discovered that his initial instinct to keep quiet was the right one. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Daniels’s employer admonished. “Bad things can happen to pilots who say they have these sightings.”

Now retired, Daniels was not particularly concerned about the safety of his jet at the time. But if, as Daniels reported, a UFO can knock a flight off course from a distance, what might happen if it were closer?

CHAPTER 4

Circled by a UFO

by Captain Júlio Miguel Guerra

In 1982, Portuguese Air Force pilot Júlio Guerra happened to look from his cockpit window down toward the ground below, and saw a low-flying metallic disc. Suddenly, it bolted up toward him at high speed. During a lengthy series of events, this object demonstrated a harrowing variety of maneuvers at close proximity to Guerra’s small plane, witnessed by two other Air Force pilots called to the scene. Since leaving the Air Force in 1990 after eighteen years of service, Guerra has been a captain with Portugália Airlines,
¹
Portugal’s largest commercial airline. He’s never seen another UFO, but remembers this life-changing event with tremendous clarity
.

O
n the morning of November 2, 1982, I was flying a DHC-1 Chipmunk northward in the region of Montejunto mountain and Torres Vedras near Ota air base. It was a beautiful, clear day with no clouds, and I was headed in the direction of my work area, E (echo) zone, planning to climb to 6,000 feet for an aerobatic training. As a twenty-nine-year-old lieutenant with ten years in the Air Force, I was a flight instructor as part of 101 Air Force squadron, flying solo in my plane.