- A British charter jet has had a close
encounter with a UFO said to be "the size of a battleship".
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- The shocked pilot and crew of a Debonair
BAe146 plane reported being buzzed by "a long cylindrical object"
as they flew over the North Sea.
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- Three other pilots have also independently
logged seeing the bright object 58 miles off the coast of Denmark.
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- Last night the Civil Aviation Authority
confirmed a comprehensive report of the pilot's sighting had been received.
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- The report says the captain and crew
first became aware of the object after the underside of the plane was immersed
in "an incandescent light".
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- A CAA spokeswoman said: "The captain
reported seeing an unnatural bright light below his aircraft while flying
at 28,000ft. The area below him was illuminated for about 10 seconds by
incandescent light and it was certainly not a light from another plane.
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- "Three other aircraft saw it moving
at a high speed or static. However, air traffic control were informed and
they confirmed that there were no other planes in the vicinity.
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- "Then, five minutes later, there
was a brief radar return from a spot 75 miles away. We believe there was
no danger involved."
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- The Luton-based 96-seater plane was flying
company executives from Linkoping, Sweden, to Humberside airport. A spokesman
for Debonair, which runs cut-price flights throughout Europe, said chief
executive Franco Mancassola had been informed that a "great red light
in the sky" had been spotted near one of the company's planes.
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- At one stage, the report says, the object
came to an abrupt halt before accelerating past the airliner at thousands
of miles an hour.
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- A CAA source says the object was tracked
by a military radar station in Yorkshire after it entered UK air space.
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- A spokesman for the 6,000 member British
Pilots Association said: "We get reports of this nature from our members
but they are few and far between.
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- "In the past 10 years or so I would
say there have been around six cases of UFO's being sighted.
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- "Many pilots are reluctant to make
such claims because it tends to lay them open to ridicule. So when they
do go as far as making a report we do expect it to be given credence."A
spokesman for the Ministry of Defence insisted there were no military aircraft
in the area adding: "We saw nothing." © Express Newspapers
Ltd
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- The Mirror - London
- From Gerry Lovell <ed@farshore.force9.co.uk
- 4-28-99
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- A passenger jet's crew have reported a close encounter
with an unidentified flying object.
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- They said that they noticed an "incandescent"
light below their Debonair BAe 146 as it headed over the North Sea from
Sweden to Humberside.
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- Then, they added, a long cylindrical silver-coloured
object the size of a battleship flew alongside. The British plane's shocked
captain saw what seemed to be rows of square portholes on the UFO before
it vanished at "enormous speed".
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- The crew told the Defence Ministry about their sighting.
An RAF radar station tracked the object, which was seen from three other
planes.
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