Pilot describes moment an Airbus with up to 220 people on board came dangerously close to crashing into 'UFO' as it came in to land

Plane narrowly avoided the 'blue and yellow' object at 3,500ft
Drama happened 13 miles outside Glasgow Airport
Nothing else was noticed on the radar at the time
Object passed beneath the plane before crew could avoid it

By Mario Ledwith

PUBLISHED: 15:19, 30 April 2013 | UPDATED: 11:00, 1 May 2013

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A passenger jet came within 300ft of colliding with an unidentified flying object, an official probe has heard.

Despite an investigation, the UK Airprox Board – which examines reports of near misses – could not explain the ‘blue and yellow’ object which passed under the Airbus 320.

The incident happened on December 2 last year over Baillieston, 13 miles east of Glasgow Airport, at around 3500ft.

The shocked pilot reported the collision risk as ‘high’.

The A320 was descending into Glasgow in clear conditions with the sun behind, when both the plane’s pilots saw an object around 100 yards away.

The board’s report said: ‘The object passed directly beneath before either of the crew had time to take avoiding action or had “really registered it”, although they both agreed that it appeared blue and yellow (or silver) in colour and was “quite large” with a small frontal area.

‘The controller stated he was not talking to anyone else in that area and nothing was seen on radar.’

In its report, the board dismissed a variety of possible explanations.

It said: ‘In the absence of a primary radar return, it was unlikely that the untraced aircraft was a fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft or man-carrying balloon.

‘It was considered that a meteorological balloon would be radar-significant and unlikely to be released in the area.

‘A glider could not be discounted but it was felt unlikely that one would be operating in that area, due to the constrained airspace and the lack of thermal activity due to low temperature.

‘Similarly, the board considered that a hang-glider or para-motor would be radar significant and that conditions precluded them.

‘Members were unable to reach a conclusion as to a likely candidate for the conflicting aircraft.

The pilot was clearly shocked and reported that there had been a 'high' risk of collision following the incident on December 2 last year.

He told his control tower: 'We just had something pass underneath us quite close. Have you got anything on in our area.'

They replied: 'Negative. We’ve got nothing on radar and we’re not talking to any traffic either'

The unidentified flying object passed directly beneath the plane before either of the crew had a chance to take action to avoid it.

Both pilots described the object as 'blue and yellow (or silver) in colour with a small frontal area but that it was "bigger than a balloon".'

The airline involved has not been identified by the report authors.

Several companies fly in Airbus 320 planes from the airport and they can seat up to 220 people - although the number of seats varies.

The report authors said they had not been able to work out what the object was.

They wrote: 'The controller stated that he was not talking to anyone else in that area and that nothing was seen on radar. Search action was taken with no result and the A320 pilot stated his intention to file an Airprox.

'Additionally, a further detailed review of individual radar sources did not yield any conclusive radar data that matched the A320 pilot's description of the encounter.

'The Air Traffic Control unit's own radar replay also showed no surveillance traces in the immediate vicinity of the A320 at the time.'

Once on the ground the A320 pilot gave a further description of the event to the Glasgow Aerodrome Controller.

The pilot said: 'We seemed to only miss it by a couple of hundred feet it went directly beneath us - wherever we were when we called it in it was within about ten seconds; couldn't tell what direction it was going but it went right underneath us.'

Asked if he thought it was a glider, the pilot replied: 'well maybe a microlight - it just looked too big for a balloon.'

But the board ruled out any such aircraft and were baffled.

'The board initially considered likely candidates for the untraced aircraft. The A320 crew had not been able to assimilate any information regarding the form of the untraced aircraft in the fleeting glimpse they had, reporting only a likely colour,' it said.

'Members were of the opinion that, in the absence of a primary radar return, it was unlikely that the untraced aircraft was a fixed-wing or rotary-wing aircraft or man-carrying balloon.

'It was considered that a meteorological balloon would be radar significant and unlikely to be released in the area of the Airprox.

'A glider could not be discounted but it was felt unlikely that one would be operating in that area, both due to the constrained airspace and the lack of thermal activity due to the low temperature.

'Similarly, The board considered that a hang-glider or para-motor would be radar significant and that conditions precluded them, as they did para-gliders or parascenders.

'Members were unable to reach a conclusion as to a likely candidate for the conflicting aircraft and it was therefore felt that the Board had insufficient information to determine a cause or risk.'

Time to pull the CCTV, if they have it?

I love UFO's. I so want them to be real. It just is a sad fact that any hard look and you get human error in observation and an explanation that is far too ordinary. It just sucks.

I love UFO's. I so want them to be real. It just is a sad fact that any hard look and you get human error in observation and an explanation that is far too ordinary. It just sucks.

Visitors From Outer Space, Real or Not, Are Focus of Discussion in Washington
By ANDREW SIDDONS
Published: May 3, 2013

WASHINGTON — While President Obama was promoting an immigration overhaul in Mexico, six former members of Congress gathered two blocks from the White House to consider what they see as the enforced government secrecy surrounding another kind of visitor: the kind who come from a lot farther away. Every day this week, the former legislators presided over panels made up of academics and — former, of course — government and military officials, who were there to discuss their research or their own eyewitness accounts of unidentified flying objects and the extraterrestrials who presumably would have occupied them.

“Something is monitoring the planet, and they are monitoring it very cautiously, because we are a very warlike planet,” said Mike Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska who ran in both the Democratic and Libertarian presidential primaries in 2008.

Mr. Gravel and his fellow panelists were assembled by the Paradigm Research Group, which says it is committed to ending the government’s “truth embargo” on the existence of extraterrestrial life. The lawmakers were there in hopes that their presence and political credibility would be enough to persuade Congress to take the issue seriously.

“I’ve been exploring how we might get this issue out of the shadows of the lunatic fringe,” said Roscoe G. Bartlett, a former Republican representative from Maryland. Before his defeat last year, Mr. Bartlett was known for sounding the alarm on the threat posed to the nation’s energy infrastructure by electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, the shock wave from a nuclear weapon detonated beyond the earth’s atmosphere.

Called the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, the event might have been mistaken as advocacy for government transparency, and some of the panelists had impressive résumés.

“I’ve come to understand and appreciate the importance of open, transparent government and the power of truth,” said Paul T. Hellyer, who served as Canadian minister of defense during the 1960s.

“We are not alone in the cosmos,” he added.

One reason the ex-members of Congress agreed to sit on the dais and ask questions may have been curiosity.

“Our country has trivialized it, has made it a joke, has made it green people with horns sticking out,” said Carolyn Kilpatrick, a Democratic representative from Michigan who lost her seat in 2010. “Now I find that it’s much more than that. And it’s not a joke. And there is scientific data that there may be something there.”

Another reason might have been the $20,000 the organizers said they paid each panelist. But they are still maintaining a healthy skepticism.

“Just because the government might have had a document about how to handle extraterrestrials doesn’t mean there were any,” said Merrill Cook, a Republican from Utah who was twice elected to the House.

The panels this week have been low-hanging fruit for the news media while President Obama is out of town and Congress is out of session, and not all of the people who study U.F.O.’s think the meetings will help them improve their stature in Washington.

“There really is something to this issue, and there is a serious side to it, but that’s not what’s being presented as this event,” said Leslie Kean, a journalist and author of “U.F.O.’s: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” a collection of firsthand accounts by people who believe they saw them.

The conclusion that U.F.O.’s are proof of extraterrestrial life is misguided, she said, and the people who broadcast that belief hindered support for real scientific research.

Despite the ridicule that usually accompanies the discussion of U.F.O.’s, they have been quietly talked about in corridors of power here. Some panelists at the event this week counted among true believers John D. Podesta, a chief of staff in President Bill Clinton’s White House, because of his role in Executive Order 12958, which requires the declassification of most government documents over 25 years old.

But the possible existence of extraterrestrial life is not exactly why he believes in government transparency, Mr. Podesta said.

“At the end of the day, there are going to be people who say that even if you did that, there must be other files that exist that you’re not disclosing,” he said in an interview.

But objects in the sky have piqued his interest. In June 2011, the Center for American Progress hosted government officials, from the Pentagon, NASA and the Department of Transportation, as well as Congressional staff and former officials from intelligence organizations, for a briefing by Ms. Kean and experts from academia and foreign militaries.

The private briefing was organized to discuss a proposal that the government establish a small office of two staff members who would selectively investigate mysterious skyward sightings and seek to understand them by applying scientific method. The proposal did not refer to U.F.O.’s, but rather, U.A.P.’s, unidentified aerial phenomena, as if those who drew up the proposal were keenly aware of how their objective could be perceived.

“They were interesting, credible people who had observed aerial phenomena that were unexplained and worthy of additional follow-up,” Mr. Podesta said. “Going back and looking at and declassifying whatever government documents exist is a smart thing to do.”