A triangular shaped UFO is seen in a still from a video recorded by US Navy; confirmed by Pentagon to be authentic.
Dermot Butler and Carl Nally
Assertions have been made in the realm of UFO/UAP research that pilots have been ‘leaned on’ or coerced to refrain from going public about their aerial encounters with strange
craft. Various cases from our files illustrate that this is in fact a reality. As long as two decades ago, we interviewed a pilot whose experience emphasised the point.
At 10:48 p.m. on the night of 23 October 2003, when this sighting occurred, he was
co-pilot on board a cargo flight out of Dublin Airport. Other witnesses were his
captain, the load master, and the flight engineer, all of whose names – and the
aircraft’s registration – are contained within our records.
Shortly after taking off, the aircraft took a heading towards the northwest. A more
northerly direction than normal was required so that bad weather could be avoided.
Aircraft movements in the area approaching Dublin were now being restricted, owing
to this adverse weather front.
By the time his aircraft reached the Slane area, north of Dublin, it had climbed up to
4,800 feet, and visibility was eight kilometres, with some broken cloud in the vicinity.
The crew had just completed its after-take off checks. He was on board an Airbus A-310-200, which affords an excellent view from the cockpit.
As he peered over the autopilot panel, looking down over the nose of the aircraft to carry out a ‘visual’ for other traffic, the pilot was surprised to see a red light suspended below his position.
He immediately informed his captain that their aircraft had traffic of some kind
close by, and he, in turn, looked out and down to see it for himself.
The unidentified object was very bright, and the crew called Dublin Air Traffic Control to let it know what was being observed in airspace that should have been clear of other traffic.
According to his statement to us, the response from ATC was that its personnel knew that the unidentified object was no ordinary aircraft.
Dublin Airport, Image: Mihal Orela
From the crew’s vantage point, the red object appeared to be stationary, with its altitude estimated to be 2,300 feet. The flight engineer on the Airbus also got up from his seat and stretched over the control panel to observe the spectacle. Within a few moments, the glaring red object accelerated from its position and shot almost vertically into the sky above. It disappeared from sight at an estimated altitude of 7,000 feet.
A comment in the pilot's statement summed up what he and his colleagues felt when they witnessed the
startling event: ‘We, the flight crew, believed that it was extraterrestrial. No doubt about it.’
When his aircraft was over the northern reaches of the Irish Sea, its crew listened as a KLM 747-400 pilot came on the radio, speaking to Dublin ATC. The Dutch aircraft was flying at 41,000 feet, travelling from the US to Europe. As far as the Airbus co- pilot could recall, the KLM aircraft’s position was about thirty-eight miles off the west coast.
The Dutch pilot informed Dublin ATC that his crew could see a bright red
object in front of them. The mysterious object was stationary, in mid-air, at the same altitude as their aircraft.
The Dutch flight requested a vector to avoid the UFO. Almost immediately, a
twenty-five degree vector was given, allowing the 747 to veer away from the
mysterious intruder. Within seconds, the anomalous object copied the aircraft’s turn and remained at a constant distance, pacing it. When the KLM flight approached the Irish coastline at County Sligo, its crew was very relieved to witness the UFO changing course and speeding away to the north.
The co-pilot of the Irish Airbus and his crew, having returned to Dublin early the
following morning, reported to the flight operations office to complete their flight
logs before going home. The office told them that it had NO report of the crew having seen anything unusual the night before!
His statement to us concluded, angrily, by asserting that he and his colleagues felt like fools. The only explanation given was that they must have seen….ball lightning! Absolutely no mention was made, officially, of what had also been observed by the KLM crew…
The overall impression that the co-pilot and his colleagues formed was that the
whole UFO question was being kept secret, at the official level at least.
It is important to make the point here that in such instances, and in other unusual
experiences that professional pilots have related to us, the suggestion has never been made to those involved by their superiors that they are either ‘seeing things’ or simply telling lies.
In our investigations, going back many years, we have never paid one cent
for information that has been supplied to us. Also, unless the identity of a witness has already been placed in the public domain, or we receive permission to name them, we guarantee total confidentiality. Nowhere is this more important for a researcher than in their dealings with pilots. Fame and fortune, therefore, simply cannot be a pilot’s motivation for coming forward and confiding in us.
In 1993 a British commercial pilot, the late Graham Sheppard, was censured in no uncertain terms by his superiors in British Airways. In March 1967, Sheppard had observed UFOs while on the flight deck of a Vickers Vanguard airliner, off the west coast of France. The objects were also observed by his colleagues and detected on radar at Bordeaux.
Twenty-six years later, he finally commented openly on this incident. He also revealed another case from 1967, when, as a co-pilot, he had observed a disc-shaped UFO from his aircraft near Manchester. This craft was detected on radar at Preston. The media jumped on his disclosure, and a chief pilot in BA sent him a strongly-worded letter warning of repercussions if he continued to talk publicly about the subject.
The implied ramifications for Sheppard’s career would have arisen not because he
was threatening a government or a military cover-up of the subject per se, but because of the potential damage a courageous and outspoken pilot could do to a company’s image by talking about UFOs and risking corporate ridicule.
Another Irish incident illustrates the closed mindset of officialdom, similar to that experienced by Sheppard. The shaken pilot’s written and spoken testimony to us is detailed below.
On the night of 3 April 2005, the witness was flying his commercial aircraft. While
changing his radio frequency to 122.0 to patch in to Dublin’s ATC tower, he
overheard the end of a conversation ATC was having with an aircraft that was flying
over County Meath (just northwest of Dublin).
The reporting aircraft told ATC that its crew had been observing red and green lights dancing about the sky between the towns of Ashbourne, Slane and Navan. When the new frequency was set on his radio, ATC was instructing the reporting aircraft to take up a heading to the northwest.
The pilot went on to state that there were seven aircraft at 11,000 feet AMSL.
Intriguingly, these aircraft were “told to be quiet”, he informed us. However, the crew of one of these aircraft broke radio silence by saying that they were picking up an echo at 17,000 feet and that three white lights could be seen.
Shortly after this message, the outline of a huge craft could be observed. It was
triangular in shape, and approximately 600 feet in length. It moved so slowly, he told us, that he was amazed that it managed to remain airborne. It then stopped, proceeded to move slowly upwards at first, then shot at great speed towards the east and out over the Irish Sea. Green and red lights followed it, changing to white as they went.
The pressures from above which came down on Graham Sheppard’s shoulders were echoed somewhat in the closing comments made to us by the witness: ‘as we pilots say, the triangle strikes again – and nobody wants to know.’ He went on to say that the most frustrating aspect of this and other UFO observations by his colleagues is that they ‘…always get made out to be fools, and a lot of us just don’t bother reporting it anymore.’ His final words are perhaps the most telling: ‘some [pilots] like myself, are in fear to do so as we get told that if we do, if pilots go on in that way, then they are not fit to fly.’
No psychiatrist’s couch in sight, yet pilot sightings of UFOs continue……
Officially, the Republic of Ireland seems exempt from UFO visitation! This is
despite the British Ministry of Defence having openly admitted to us in 1997 that its files contained UFO sightings from Northern Ireland the previous year. So, unless the pilots or controllers of these UFOs suddenly (and miraculously) veer off over the Irish Sea when they reach the Republic’s border, it’s a safe bet that they have been inhabiting the airspace over the whole island – uncomfortable though that reality may be to officialdom.
The dearth of officially acknowledged UFOs within the Republic’s airspace
contrasts sharply with how they have been admitted elsewhere. It has been quite acceptable if Irish pilots see them – but not in Ireland.
An example of this was a UFO being observed by an Irish flight crew flying over Herefordshire in 1997. Their aircraft was an Aer Lingus BAe 146, travelling from Dublin to Stanstead. The pilots
reported seeing a blue, red and white striped craft flying past them at 9,000 feet. Despite extensive inquiries, the aircraft proximity team that investigated the sighting was unable to find any trace of another aircraft in the area at the relevant time. The report that was issued by the Airprox Working Group said that it felt sure that whatever the BAe 146 crew had encountered ‘was not an aeroplane’.
This serves to illustrate that pilots ARE experiencing something else, from
somewhere else.
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