UFO over Chicago’s Airport
Date: November 7, 2006
Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States
With over a thousand flights a day, Chicago’s O’Hare Airport is amongst the busiest airports in the world. What happens when a UFO is spotted hovering above one of the departure gates? How do the authorities respond to such an event? Although this is not a situation airport officials have to face often, the unexpected happened on November 7, 2006, at Chicago’s airport.
The first sighting was made at around 16:30 by an unnamed United Airlines taxi mechanic, who was pushing back a B-737-500 from gate C17 that was scheduled to depart shortly thereafter. In his report, the individual stated that he “was compelled to look straight up, for some reason, and was startled to see the aircraft hovering silently.” 57
The individual described the UFO as being disc-shaped and silver in color. Its metallic surface had an angular size of roughly twenty-six inches, and it was rotating silently at an altitude of five hundred to one thousand feet. This individual was not the only one who saw the object. Ten to fifteen of his colleagues were astonished at the sighting too. They even radioed the cockpit crew in the airplane they were pushing back to have a look at the unidentified object. Around two minutes after first seeing the object, the witness described how the UFO “shot off into the clouds ” and disappeared.58 The sighting lasted for approximately five minutes.
Aviation mechanics from different gates saw the object in the sky, too. A taxi mechanic, who was pushing an empty United Airlines aircraft back to the hanger, reported hearing a conversation over the radio between two pilots who had mentioned the disc-shaped object in the sky. The witness stated that he heard the pilots describing an unidentified aircraft that was seven hundred feet above ground level. The disc-shaped object hovered silently before it shot off through the clouds and disappeared.
In the report to the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), one of the witnesses commented on how he and his colleagues were sure that this was not a conventional or a terrestrial aircraft. He stated that it “had means of propulsion that we don’t know of. There were no downward facing engines for thrust that I could see on the bottom. There was no place for exhaust to be coming from and no visible air column that would keep something hovering.” 59
The Aftermath
Although the witnesses were all credible individuals, an official investigation was not carried out. Before we go into the aftermath and the explanation provided by the Federal Aviation Administration, I must state that the witnesses were knowledgeable individuals who certainly could differentiate a weather balloon or a natural phenomenon from an aircraft. These individuals spend their day working with aircraft. We must also acknowledge the severity of this report. Although this object is unidentified, it could have posed a threat to national security and the fact that an official investigation was not carried out is truly worrying.
“Anytime an airborne object can hover for several minutes over a busy airport but not be registered on radar or seen visually from the control tower, constitutes a potential threat to flight safety.” 60
As we have seen from the previous chapters in this book, it seems that the easiest explanation officials provide for a UFO sighting is that the sighting was a natural weather phenomenon. Elizabeth Cory, a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration, stated that the silver disc-shaped object was simply a natural phenomenon caused by the atmospheric conditions. In her statement, Cory said “Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon. That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low cloud ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds sometimes you can see funny things. That’s our take on it.” 61
Although the FAA attributed the sighting to a weather phenomenon, they failed to explain what weather phenomenon this was and how it could have been mistaken for a disc-shaped aircraft hovering silently in the sky. Apart from this preposterous explanation, it is also difficult to understand why the employees, who reported seeing the unidentified object in the sky, were forced to stay silent.
Reporting for the Chicago Tribune, Jon Hilkevitch interviewed an airline employee who was one of the witnesses on the day. An unnamed individual told Hilkevitch that all United Airlines employees who were witnesses were immediately interviewed by management and they were instructed to “write reports and draw pictures of what they observed.” The United employee went on to tell him that they were told that they could not talk to anyone about what they had seen.
Conclusion
Although this case is still unexplained, the FAA certainly wants to keep it that way. Numerous attempts have been made by investigators calling for the FAA to launch a formal investigation into the sighting. The administration refused to do so, even though the phenomenon was witnessed by over twelve credible individuals.
It is also important to highlight the fact that United Airlines and the FAA initially denied that such a sighting happened. Prior to Chicago Tribune filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the two entities denied that a UFO was seen hovering above the airport. Naturally, when the report was then made public, the FAA was forced to provide a response, albeit it was a nonsensical one.
One baggage handler who was interviewed by Hilkevitch summed up the situation perfectly. The individual stated “Some of us are getting angry with this being hushed up with all the terrorism and TSA idiots hanging around. If we see a funny looking bag all damn hell breaks loose but park a funny silver thing a few hundred feet above a busy airport and everyone tries to hush it up. It just doesn’t make sense.” 62
57. Richard Haines et al., “Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and Its Safety Implications of O’Hare International Airport on November 7, 2006,” National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomenta, May 14, 2007, 9. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5cf80ff422b5a90001351e31/t/5d02ec731230e20001528e2c/1560472703346/NARCAP_TR-10.pdf.
58. Haines, “Report of an Unidentifed Aerial Phenomenon,” 9.
59. Haines, “Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” 101.
60. Billy Cox, “O’Hare Incident Worth Revisiting,” Herald-Tribune, August 21, 2007, https://www.heraldtribune.com/news/20070821/ohare-incident-worth-revisiting.
61. Haines, “Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” 16.
62. Haines, “Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,” 18.