Airliner had near miss with UFO

[villager]

Source: BBC

Airliner had near miss with UFO

A passenger jet bound for Heathrow Airport had a near miss with a UFO, Ministry of Defence files reveal.

The captain of the Alitalia airliner shouted "Look out" to his co-pilot at the sight of a brown missile-shaped object shooting past them overhead. Civil Aviation Authority and military investigations could not explain the 1991 incident near Lydd in Kent.

The unsolved close encounter features in UFO-related military documents made available by the National Archives. After ruling out the object flying past the Alitalia jet being a missile, weather balloon or space rocket, the MoD closed the inquiry.

Nineteen files covering sightings between 1986 and 1992 are being made available online. Almost 200 such files will be made available by the MoD over the next four years. The current batch also includes a US Air Force pilot's account of being ordered to shoot down a UFO that appeared on his radar while he flew over East Anglia.

There is also an MoD request that army and navy helicopters not take photographs of crop circles, because of concerns about undermining the official line that the military did not investigate unexplained phenomena.

<snip>


Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7679145.stm

[liberal N proud]

1. A brown missile-shaped object?

Someone trying to shoot down an airliner?

[TheWraith]

4. More likely a reckless pilot of some other kind of aircraft, possibly American.

An actual missile would be smaller and moving faster than could be easily seen or dodged, and would have terminal guidance.

[SmokingJacket]

2. Strange -- more and more of these odd sightings.

I think it's likely some covert military thing.

Still. The one time I saw something I'd call a "UFO" it was also a brown, missile shaped thing moving extremely fast and changing direction... :tinfoil:

[pattmarty]

3. The Clinton "cigar"? A dick? C'mon, get real.

[foxfeet]

5. A flying turd?

[ForrestGump]

7. Which one?

McCain or Bush Jr?

[Indenturedebtor]

6. A skeptic would also be skeptical of the idea that it wasn't a UFO :P

I'm no "believer" but I'm open to the possibility that advanced species send probes and scouting missions here to conduct science. We send probes to dead planets to check em out... do you think if we were capable of checking out a living planet with a somewhat intelligent species o it we wouldn't put some resources into that?

[immoderate]

9. A skeptic might go even further...

What "advanced species" are you talking about? A species capable of interstellar travel, without detection, needs to come here to "conduct science?" What do they need to find out from us? What's up our butt?

--IMM

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

8. Probably one of Roger Waters' pig balloons. n/t

[man4allcats]

10. "They're here, right now, living among us.

The government knows all about it." - Jack "George Hanson" Nicholson - Easy Rider

[Bake]

11. It looks like a ... a ... great big .... JOHNSON! CALL THE PRESIDENT!!

:rofl:

Bake

[villager]

12. I wonder how certain items from the exact same news websites

get judged as, well, "news" or not...

hmmm....