UFOs - Leslie Kean [33]
Air traffic controllers are often aware of these unreported encounters with UAP, since they are normally the first to receive radio calls from the cockpit crew about the UAP, or pick up the targets on radar. But they, also, do not report many incidents. A controller at Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control Center wrote, “In my six years at the Center, I have personally been part of three bizarre encounters, non-military and non-civilian. I’m just one of 15,000 controllers, too, so there have to be many more that go unreported … In a fourth incident I was present for (in the area but not at the actual sector), the controller told the supe about the encounter, and after both determined there was nothing on radar, they just kind of shook their heads and rubbed their chins, and that was that. This I believe is what typically happens. Nobody knows what to do, really.”16
Based on surveys and pilot interviews conducted by myself and associates at NARCAP, we estimate that only about 5 to 10 percent of pilot sightings of UAP are reported. Unless we implement policy changes, aircrew will continue to remain silent.
History is filled with accounts of previously ridiculed subjects that have turned out to be important to mankind, as a study of the history of science confirms. We must not simply overlook UAP because we are uncomfortable with the mere thought of them. Neither society’s current prejudice toward UAP nor its abiding ignorance about them is likely to prevent their continued appearance, nor do such responses prove that they don’t exist. These phenomena simply won’t go away.
CHAPTER 6
Incursion at O’Hare Airport, 2006
On November 7, 2006, something unimaginable happened at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport during the1 routine afternoon rush hour. For about five minutes, a disc-shaped object hovered quietly over the United Airlines terminal and then cut a sharp hole in the cloud bank above while zooming off. Hardly anyone heard about it until the story broke on the front page of the Chicago Tribune on January 1, 2007, almost two months later, which precipitated a flurry of national coverage on CNN, MSNBC, and other networks. With over a million hits, the Tribune’s story quickly achieved the status of being the most-read piece in the entire history of the newspaper’s website, but then faded from the media radar screen. No official assessment was ever provided to a fascinated but alarmed frequent-flying public or to the employees of United who were directly involved.
It was an ordinary, overcast day, with visibility of about 4 miles and winds at 4 knots. Between 4:00 and 4:30 p.m. on that afternoon, pilots, managers, and mechanics from United Airlines looked up from their ground positions at the terminal and saw the strange object hovering just under a cloud bank, which began at 1,900 feet above the ground. According to these witnesses, the metallic-looking disc was about the size of a quarter or half dollar held at arm’s length. Based on the collection of eyewitness testimony, the UFO is estimated to have ranged in size from about 22 to 88 feet in diameter, and was suspended at approximately 1,500 feet over Gate C17 at the United terminal.
A pilot announced the sighting over in-bound ground radio for all grounded planes; a United taxi mechanic moving a Boeing 777 heard radio chatter about the flying disc and looked up; pilots waiting to take off opened the front windows to lean out and see the object for themselves.