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By Root 962 0

safety was challenged by an unidentified object, according to virtually any standards: military, private, or commercial. Whenever another airborne vehicle of any kind cannot be communicated with, makes a very high-speed approach, and then stops unexpectedly within fifteen feet of one’s airplane, any pilot in the world would be justifiably concerned and even afraid. Lieutenant Guerra and his two fellow pilots are to be commended for reporting this bizarre incident to officials, although the pressures against doing so are less intense in Europe and South America than they are here. In addition, General Ferreira, the Portuguese Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, willingly made all the records available to a scientific research group qualified to investigate—a scenario that we unfortunately do not see in the United States. Yet all countries are equally affected by the fact that UAP can appear without warning at any time and place.

Three kinds of UAP dynamic behaviors and their consequences have been consistently reported. First and foremost are near-miss and other high-speed maneuvers by UAP near airplanes. Many cases involve a relatively small distance—generally on the order of tens of yards—between the aircraft and the reported aerial phenomenon, which qualifies them as near misses by federal aviation standards in the United States and the United Kingdom. While a pilot’s estimate of the distance to a UAP may be affected by darkness or the lack of reliable visual distance cues, these highly trained professionals are generally quite accurate and usually will not be in error by more than an order of magnitude.1

Fortunately, the immediate physical threat of in-flight collision seems unlikely because of the high degree of maneuverability exhibited by the UAP. In many cases, the objects rapidly avoid a collision at the last minute, and it’s not left up to the pilots to make these moves. But in some cases, pilot reactions can be a problem, as well. In order to avoid a perceived collision with UAP, some have made violent control inputs resulting in passenger and flight crew injury. And there is always the danger that if a pilot makes the wrong control input at the wrong time during an extremely close encounter, a midair collision could occur.

In one example, a U.S. Air Force Boeing KB-50 aerial refueling tanker was making a night landing at Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina when the pilot and crew noticed an object and saw strange lights. On their final approach, the pilot had to maneuver around the object and climb again to wait for it to depart. Air Force tower personnel saw the UAP hovering above the airport, and watched it through binoculars for twenty minutes, stating that it was not an atmospheric phenomenon of any kind. Air Force officials acknowledged that “the UFO presented a hazard to aircraft operating in the area”—one of the few official statements to this effect on record.2

The second impact that UAP can have on aviation safety is to affect the proper functioning of navigation guidance equipment, flight control systems, radar operations, and radio communication with interference from its alleged electromagnetic radiation. Obviously, in situations where pilots rely on their instruments, the probability of an incident or accident increases when anomalous electromagnetic effects cause them to malfunction. Fortunately, in most of these instances, equipment resumes normal functioning after the object departs.

Finally, cockpit distractions produced by close encounters with UAP divert the attention of the crew and can impair their ability to fly the airplane safely. It is understandable that witnessing bizarre objects or unexplained lights pacing beside an airplane, or flying circles around it, would be disconcerting to anyone on board, especially those responsible for passenger safety.

The information I’ve collected to document cases of UAP affecting aviation safety comes from my extensive database. It consists of pilot and air traffic control reports drawn from official U.S. and other government sources, private