NARRATOR: Terrifying encounters at 40,000 feet.
So I kind of looked over my left shoulder,
and there’s this bright light in our face.
It’s a pulsating orb.
Look at that, dude. Look at that.
NARRATOR: Pilot accounts of UFOs
taking control of their aircraft.
BILL BIRNES: Goes to move the yoke,
and the yoke is moving on itself.
If it climbs any further,
it will stall out.
NARRATOR: And entire jumbo jets
disappearing into thin air.
How do you have a commercial airliner just vanish?
NARRATOR: Since the dawn of aviation,
pilots have experienced unexplainable events in the sky.
Is it possible that what they have witnessed
are aliens in our airspace?
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: When you have thousands of pilots
coming forward with encounters
that they’ve witnessed up in the sky,
with so-called UFOs,
I think we should pay more attention
to what these pilots have been saying.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway
in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything
we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
In 2017, The New York Times broke the story
of the U.S. government’s secret investigations
into unexplained aerial phenomena.
And in the years that followed,
a number of sensational UFO videos
have been released, or leaked, to the public.
NARRATOR: Nearly all of the footage
was recorded by cameras
mounted on U.S. Navy fighter jets.
The videos captured the public’s
imagination like no other UFO images
that had come before them...
But Navy pilots are not alone
in witnessing unidentified flying objects.
For decades, shocking encounters
have been reported by non-military,
civilian pilots.
UAP sightings by commercial airline pilots
are a lot more commonplace than what we generally think of.
We’ve seen a lot of the footage from the military,
but we’re actually getting a lot more reports
from our civilian pilots.
There are more civilian pilots than military pilots.
And you have
an exponentially larger amount of flights
with commercial airlines
than you do with military airplanes.
NARRATOR: Japan Airlines Flight 1628
is carrying cargo from Paris, France
to Narita International Airport near Tokyo.
The three-person crew
is led by Captain Kenju Terauchi,
an ex-fighter pilot with over 10,000 hours of flight time.
As the 747 approaches Anchorage,
Captain Terauchi notices two strange lights
out of his cockpit window.
It’s dark. It’s, uh, very early morning. Before sunrise.
These lights are clearly maneuvering.
They are, in relationship to each other,
one is on top of the other,
and they move directly in front of his aircraft.
Now, he’s flying at about 500 miles per hour.
These things are pacing him.
NARRATOR: Captain Terauchi realizes the lights
are strange oval-shaped flying objects,
and they are getting dangerously close to his aircraft.
As bright lights fill the cockpit,
Captain Terauchi radios
the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center
and asks if they can identify the objects near his plane.
NARRATOR: As Terauchi attempts a series of evasive maneuvers
to avoid a potential collision,
the two UFOs suddenly disappear.
In their place is another object.
One so large, it dwarfs the 747.
RICHARD DOLAN: His words for describing it were, "gigantic spaceship
the size of maybe two aircraft carriers."
Just immense.
Tarauchi sees this massive thing in the sky,
and he’s scared.
NARRATOR: Concerned by Captain Terauchi’s report,
the air traffic controller calls NORAD,
the North American Aerospace Defense Command,
based at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.
Communication specialists at the airbase
confirm that there is a very large unidentified object
on their radar screens.
Traffic control told them that they could actually
take whatever evasive actions they needed to,
to avoid collision,
and they even dropped down to 4,000 feet
above sea level,
and the thing continued to follow them.
RYAN SPRAGUE: Air traffic control diverted another
commercial flight to come look at this UFO.
And by the time they got there,
the UFO was completely gone.
TSOUKALOS: One of the reasons
why the J.A.L. report is such a big deal is because
the corroborating evidence is overwhelming.
Not only were there eyewitness reports,
but there’s the records of the communication systems
that Terauchi was in touch with,
actual dialogue that happened.
"Hey, we are up here.
We see this. Are you guys seeing this on your radar?"
All this stuff is recorded.
NARRATOR: Once safely grounded,
Captain Terauchi, his copilot
and flight engineer were immediately interviewed
by Alaska Federal Aviation Administration officials
and other special agents.
NICK POPE: There’s an FAA
investigation into this.
There’s lots of documentation.
There’s no real, hard and fast conclusion about this.
And so, the pilot, perhaps out of frustration,
talks to the media.
NARRATOR: In December 1986, one month after the encounter,
Captain Terauchi contacted Kyodo News
and said he believed the mysterious crafts
were of extraterrestrial origin.
The unauthorized statements
prompted Japan Airlines officials
to remove Captain Terauchi from pilot duty,
and assign him to a desk job.
Around the same time, John Callahan,
the FAA’s division chief
of the Accidents and Investigations branch.
learned of the incident
and deemed it worthy of investigation.
DOLAN: John Callahan went to D.C. about this,
and there was a meeting
that was chaired by
one of the top people of the FAA.
This meeting was also attended
by representatives of the FBI,
representatives of the CIA
and representatives of President Reagan’s White House.
They had audiotapes
that were played,
between the pilot and air traffic control,
describing everything that was happening,
and written reports.
And at the end of the meeting,
one of the CIA, uh, agents
stood up and said, "This meeting never happened,
"and we’re confiscating all of the data
that has been, uh, shared here."
Now, Callahan,
he was a little sly, but he was within his rights.
"They never asked me," he said, "if I had a copy
of any of this myself," he said. "Which I did."
He had a copy of the audio recordings, if nothing else.
And a little over a decade later,
shared that with the public.
MICAH HANKS: John Callahan came away with the feeling
that there was essentially a kind of coverup.
The FAA didn’t want the fact
that this incident had occurred to get out.
POPE: I’ve spoken to pilots who have seen
amazing things out there,
but never report it
because of the fear of being disbelieved,
being ridiculed, and
perhaps, being grounded.
You won’t be flying anymore.
So, what do they say? Most times, nothing.
TSOUKALOS: You have countless commercial and private airline pilots
who spend an exorbitant amount of time up in the sky.
And, in my opinion, I think they’re the best people
to discern what is natural
and what is not.
NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists
are concerned,
UFO encounters reported by civilian pilots
provide some of the most compelling evidence
that there is an extraterrestrial presence
in the skies above Earth.
And, according to some pilots,
what they’ve witnessed presents
a serious danger.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,
UFO sightings reported by pilots
are particularly intriguing,
because while accounts of strange phenomena in the sky
date back millennia,
it is only in the past century
that humans have had an aerial vantage point.
DAVID CHILDRESS: For thousands of years,
we could only observe things in the sky
from the ground,
but in the last hundred or so years,
we’ve had the ability to fly.
And so now we’re up in the sky ourselves.
We can discern natural phenomena from powered craft.
NARRATOR: Thousands of pilots
have reported observing
phenomena in the sky that do not resemble any weather anomaly
or man-made aircraft they’ve ever encountered.
Such was the case with Captain Erik Delgado,
who served as an Air Force pilot for ten years
before being hired to fly for FedEx in 2001.
On the evening of March 20, 2020,
Captain Delgado departed from Mexico City
in a Boeing 767 bound for Memphis, Tennessee.
One hour into the flight, Delgado noticed something
strange in the distance.
DELGADO: Usually when we get to altitude, we’ll relax.
I was conversing with my first officer,
and as I’m looking at him,
his eyes got really big
and, uh, his mouth kind of dropped.
And I’m like, what the hell is this guy looking at?
And he goes, "Look at the shooting star,"
and he stops, never-never finished the word, "Star."
And so I kind of looked over my left shoulder,
and if you can, uh, imagine a lighthouse in thin fog,
kind of just a-a spotlight, sort of,
that just kind of came over us, and I thought,
"Oh, my God, it’s another airplane,
"and he’s got a vector toward us.
What’s this clown doing?"
I grabbed the throttles, gripping it with a death grip.
I was getting ready to disconnect the autopilot.
And I’m looking at the screen,
realizing there’s nothing on the screen.
NARRATOR: Delgado immediately used his digital camera
to record the astonishing sight.
NARRATOR: Within minutes of the sighting,
the orb moved towards the plane
at a high rate of speed,
then suddenly stopped short.
DELGADO: My heart was racing still.
Speed doesn’t kill, you know?
Deceleration, stopping, that’s what kills you.
And the fact that this thing stopped like that,
if there were somebody inside there,
you know, um,
our conventional laws of physics and stopping,
they wouldn’t have survived the g-forces,
to come to a stop like that.
NARRATOR: The UAP flew alongside Delgado’s aircraft
at an astonishing
500 miles per hour,
and yet there was no sign
of a propulsion system.
DELGADO: This thing was parked on our wingtip,
about a thousand, 2,000 feet,
and it didn’t move.
With your naked eye, it was just
bright, dim, bright, dim.
And it was very cyclic.
It didn’t waver, it was the same.
And you look through the camera,
and now you could see features in a shape.
NARRATOR: The object continued to track
Delgado’s aircraft for nearly 30 miles.
DELGADO: This thing started rotating,
and started changing colors and it started taking off.
And so, I’m zooming in as fast as I could.
DELGADO: This thing took off with pretty good velocity.
NARRATOR: After making a safe landing,
Delgado shared his videos with
air operations center personnel,
even though his copilot was reluctant
to file an official report.
DELGADO: There was still a stigma, behind the whole thing.
You know, are they gonna ground us?
Are they gonna ask for our medical, you know?
Are we gonna have to go see somebody?
So, I could understand where he was coming from.
HANKS: In recent years, we’ve seen military pilots
being encouraged to come forward
and talk about things they’ve seen.
The same has not necessarily
always extended to commercial pilots
because there isn’t an interest
in collecting information from those pilots
the same as there would be with military pilots,
where in the interest of national security,
if you see something, say something.
But traditionally,
when commercial pilots contacted the FAA,
they have been told, "Hey, you need to talk
to civilian UFO researchers,"
or they don’t actually have a clear idea
of where else they can even log those reports.
So it’s a very different situation.
NARRATOR: Captain Delgado decided not to give the video
to the FAA, and instead, turned it over to
the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena,
or NARCAP,
a civilian organization made up of volunteers
who investigate unidentified aerial sightings.
They concluded that the glowing object
was consistent with that of an exotic craft
with a plasma exterior that could disrupt radar signals.
I think I saw some intelligent anomaly.
It’s amazing, I-I’d like to know
more of the science and the physics
behind what I was looking at, maybe.
But, you know,
see the footage and-and form your own opinions.
TSOUKALOS: Things need to change,
because pilots should be at the forefront
of being free enough
to come forward to report what they saw.
NARRATOR: The FAA has never conducted
an official investigation into pilot Delgado’s incident.
But would they take notice if a UFO sighting
affected an entire airport?
A ramp employee for United Airlines Flight 446
spots a metallic saucer-shaped object
hovering over gate C-17,
between 1,000 and 1,900 feet in the air.
Within minutes, federal authorities
receive nearly a dozen panicked phone calls
from airport personnel.
SPRAGUE: Here you have pilots, here you have
people working at the airport,
and civilians going to get on their flights,
all witness a UFO hovering
directly over one of the gates at the airport.
This UFO was cylindrical in shape.
It was metallic.
NARRATOR: Witnesses estimated the object
to be between 16 and 24 feet in diameter.
POPE: Suddenly, this thing just accelerates vertically,
and punches a hole through the cloud.
Everyone’s staggered by this.
Now, there is a meteorological phenomenon
called a "hole punch cloud."
But that doesn’t really fit with the idea
that there was this metallic craft
hovering before this happened.
STEVEN GREENSTREET: A hole punch cloud is a real phenomena,
but the weather conditions needed
to produce a hole punch cloud
weren’t there that day. (chuckles)
They weren’t there that day.
And so that explanation doesn’t make any sense at all.
WILLIAM HENRY: The Chicago Tribune, they end up filing
a Freedom of Information Act request
with the FAA, and, lo and behold, they get a recording.
So we have a United Airlines supervisor
on the phone with the FAA controller using the word "UFO."
So, once again,
we have a scenario where the FAA,
and we have United Airlines personnel,
in this case, saying there’s nothing to see here,
but, in fact, there was.
NARRATOR: Is it possible the U.S. government
has been concealing evidence
about UAP sightings near our airports?
According to UFO researchers,
it would fit a disturbing pattern
of ignoring what many believe are serious threats
to the millions of people who travel the skies every day.
Threats that are surprisingly well-documented
and sometimes even caught on tape.
NARRATOR: For decades, civilian pilots have been frustrated
by the Federal Aviation Administration’s
refusal to investigate encounters
between commercial airlines and unidentified flying objects.
Skeptics argue that these encounters lack hard data
like telemetry, radar and audio recordings
that would warrant an investigation.
But there have, in fact, been numerous incidents
where viable evidence has been collected,
including an event
involving two aircraft travelling over
the state of Arizona.
In 2018, flying over Arizona,
you’ve got a Learjet, you’ve got an American Airlines jet,
and something zips over the Learjet,
right over top.
And they immediately call ATC.
GREENSTREET: Radar tower says, "We don’t see anything.
We don’t know what the heck it is."
And so, the radar tower calls the American Airlines jet
behind that plane, and says
"Hey, look out for a second.
Object should be coming your way."
NARRATOR: The pilot of the American Airlines jet
initially responds requesting clarification.
NARRATOR: Then, just moments later,
the American Airlines pilot radios back
to air traffic control.
This incident is significant
because there are audio recordings
of the whole incident,
and the pilots actually
use the word, "UFO,"
when they’re talking to the control tower.
NARRATOR: According to researchers, the Arizona encounter
was never openly investigated by the government,
despite the evidence presented in the recordings
between the two pilots and air traffic control.
Neither was another incident,
this one so serious, it required a call
to the U.S. Air Force.
The Oregon coast.
October 25, 2017.
A radar operator spots a fast-moving
unidentified object in a busy commercial flight path.
DELGADO: There were no pilots involved in that initial reporting.
It was just a tower controller and a...
and a radar center operator,
and they’re going back and forth.
NARRATOR: The radar operator contacts air traffic control
in Seattle, Washington.
GREENSTREET: The object has no call sign.
It has no transponder.
It’s not communicating. What is this object?
Pilots in the air start picking it up visually.
Multiple pilots from multiple airlines
flying both north and south up the coast.
And they see this huge white object
moving extremely fast at 37,000 feet.
CHILDRESS: The pilots could see a white light
that was coming at them and moving around,
and they reported it to the control tower
and the pilot said that it was moving erratically.
GREENSTREET: This object was a little bit too close for comfort.
And so they tried to communicate with it.
All the things that this object should have given off
if it was an authorized aircraft, a U.S. aircraft,
a commercial aircraft, weren’t there.
It was just silent.
And so the military scrambled two F-15 fighters
to go intercept this thing.
POPE: Now, you don’t do that lightly. This is a big call.
This is the sort of thing
that you do on a 9/11 type event.
So, what happened?
Why did they take this one so seriously
that a fighter interceptor
was sent up to try and take a look?
NARRATOR: The F-15s race to intercept the UFO,
but this proves more difficult than expected.
CHILDRESS: Once the jets were on their way,
this UFO suddenly shot off in a different direction,
and was very fast, and was able to make
these quick turns, and at very high speeds.
GREENSTREET: At one point, this object changes direction.
It’s flying southbound,
and then turns and goes northbound.
So, the F-15 fighters,
they go there and at the last minute,
as best anyone can guess,
turns and zips out over the Pacific Ocean.
NARRATOR: Observers are shocked
that F-15s, among the nation’s fastest
and most sophisticated fighter jets, are unable
to catch up with the mysterious object.
GREENSTREET: What’s great about this is the audiotapes,
which were released via the Freedom of Information Act.
When you hear the process happen,
from initial sighting
to the scrambling
of military jets,
it’s fascinating to hear that happen.
"What should we do?"
It goes to the Air Force, it goes to NORAD.
It’s there and seen by so many, and then it’s gone.
NARRATOR: These two incidents are considered
to be among a multitude of reports where analyzable
data, including radar, radio transmissions,
telemetry and eyewitness accounts,
offer compelling evidence
of unidentified aerial phenomena.
Yet, to the public’s knowledge,
these dangerous encounters
have never been investigated by the government.
UFO experts believe the flying public
is at significant risk,
and as evidence, point to a mysterious case
where a pilot experienced his worst nightmare
10,000 feet in the air.
NARRATOR: Zihuatanejo, Mexico.
May 3, 1975.
After dropping off passengers at this seaport town
on the Pacific Coast, pilot Carlos de los Santos
embarks on a return trip to Mexico City
in his Piper PA-24 Comanche.
The weather conditions are clear,
and visibility is good, as De los Santos
cruises at 10,000 feet.
One hour into the flight,
he witnesses something unusual.
A gray, wingless object off the left side of his plane.
DOLAN: As he approaches Mexico City,
he notices, basically, a small flying saucer
just above his left wing.
It’s not as large as his aircraft,
and he’s flying a fairly small aircraft.
And he’s like, "What is this?"
And then he looks over to his right and he sees another one.
And then he looks ahead of them,
and there’s one coming at him.
It goes below his aircraft,
and he feels a bump under his aircraft.
And he’s scared out of his mind.
Anyone would be.
But he then realizes that he’s not really
in control of his aircraft.
His aircraft is moving in a way
that seems to respond to these objects, not to him.
He goes to move the yoke,
and the yoke is moving on itself.
The plane starts climbing
to 3,000 meters.
That’s the ceiling of the Piper.
If it climbs any further, it will stall out.
He will lose control.
The plane will fall out of the sky.
DOLAN: He’s actually becoming afraid
because his cabin’s not pressurized.
You get to a certain altitude,
he’s gonna have a hard time breathing.
BIRNES: The theory is that the UFO
that came under the plane,
took control of his plane,
and the UFO’s own magnetic envelope
is lifting the plane higher and higher and higher.
De los Santos is in a panic. He’s giving Mayday calls.
DOLAN: He’s telling them, "There are these
"unidentified objects at my wingtips,
and below me, and I don’t know what to do."
NARRATOR: As the private plane races towards a mountainous area,
the three UAPs disengage from Carlos’s plane
and veer off toward the Mount Popocatépetl volcano
at lightning speed.
As the objects disappear from sight,
Carlos regains control of the plane.
But he quickly realizes his ordeal isn’t over.
DOLAN: He can’t initiate his landing gear
because of the impact that one of these objects
made on his aircraft.
He has to circle around
the airport about ten times.
And he uses a screwdriver
to push the lever to get his, uh,
landing gear to come down,
and he successfully lands his aircraft.
It’s kind of an amazing thing there.
So, he lands his aircraft.
And the story doesn’t end here.
Now he would’ve had his whole career,
reputation ruined, probably, with this,
except for the fact that
Mexican air traffic control tracked these objects also,
and this came out to support him.
This story became a huge news story in Mexico.
Didn’t really make much impact in the United States,
but it was a very big story in Mexico.
NARRATOR: Years later, De los Santos
revealed that in the aftermath of the event,
he was twice approached by mysterious figures
warning him not to speak about his experience.
The first occasion was just before
he was scheduled to be interviewed
by a Mexican television station.
The second happened when De los Santos was set to meet
with the famous UFO investigator, J. Allen Hynek.
Hynek was into the case.
A lot of people were following this case.
And just before he was going to meet with Hynek at some hotel,
he gets another encounter from, um,
one of these men in black,
these tall, pasty, white-skinned guys
who warned him, don’t talk about this.
He was threatened.
And he did actually stop talking about this
for a little while after that.
But as time went by, he-he’s talked about it.
It’s just one of the most incredible
aviation UAP stories that you’re ever gonna hear,
and he got out of it alive.
NARRATOR: Pilot Carlos de los Santos
ultimately emerged from his harrowing
midair encounter unscathed,
but similar confrontations
between civilian planes and UFOs
have led to tragic consequences,
including injuries, crashes
and even loss of life.
NARRATOR: The National UFO Reporting Center,
or NUFORC, has counted
at least 100 cases in the U.S.
where flight safety was impaired
because of close calls with unidentified aerial phenomena.
And in at least one incident,
it appears a collision with a UFO
caused fatal results.
Former NYPD pilot and flight instructor Thomas Preziose
departs from Mobile Downtown Airport,
piloting a single-engine Cessna
with the call sign "Night Ship 282."
The story of Night Ship 282 is quite alarming.
A Hollywood script writer couldn’t come up with this one.
We have a NYPD pilot, a freight hauler,
very experienced flight instructor...
...hauling documents from Mobile, Alabama
up north to Montgomery.
Routine flight.
NARRATOR: Due to poor visibility,
Preziose was flying by his instruments.
Just one minute into the flight,
he spotted something in the distance,
and immediately radioed air traffic control.
MIKE RICKSECKER: He saw what looked like another plane in the sky,
was just confirming that
that was another plane up there.
And then all of a sudden, he’s alarmed.
He’s panicked. Something is coming at him.
BIRNES: This pilot sees an object in front of him
on a collision course with his plane.
What does he do?
He radios a request for permission to deviate.
"I must deviate, I must deviate,"
he says over the radio.
He deviates.
Silence.
The transmission goes dead.
NARRATOR: Five minutes after takeoff,
Night Ship 282 crashes into Big Bateau Bay.
Tragically, Thomas Preziose is killed on impact.
When investigators
from The National Transportation Safety Board,
or NTSB, arrive at the scene,
they discover parts of the Cessna
scattered over an area of nearly 200 yards.
The plane is not just demolished,
it’s almost vaporized.
Something obviously hit the plane.
The props are damaged, the wings are damaged,
the fuselage is damaged.
Wholesale damage inside the mechanics of the airplane.
HENRY: It becomes apparent he has collided
with something in midair.
NARRATOR: A midair collision of such extreme force
would naturally send two wrecks spiraling to the ground.
But an extensive search of the area
produced only one aircraft.
DOLAN: No other wreckage was ever found.
No other craft which would’ve
presumably done this.
The most bizarre thing about this is that there are these
strange red markings
all over parts of the aircraft.
These red markings have not
been identified, as far as I can tell.
And they’re in a variety of places of the aircraft.
The NTSB suggested that whatever it hit
was this color red or had this red coating on it,
and when it hit, it rubbed off on this guy’s craft.
They also found pieces of metal in the wings
that didn’t belong to the plane.
Various pieces of metal were imbedded in the crashed plane
that weren’t part of that plane.
So, something metal, something red.
But at the end of the day, a mystery.
GARY HESELTINE: Clearly, this is one of the rare occasions
where there was a collision that obliterated a plane,
killed the pilot, and the FAA,
the aviation authorities and the investigations that followed
could not explain it,
and to this day, cannot explain it.
CHILDRESS: You have to wonder if this incident,
which caused the death of the pilot,
wasn’t also some extraterrestrial incident
where, perhaps, a flying saucer or other craft
hit this plane,
or the plane itself hit the craft.
NARRATOR: For UFO researchers,
the tragic case of Thomas Preziose
raises the question:
Is it possible that there have been other fatal collisions
with UFOs that have gone unreported?
Or happened before the pilot could radio air traffic control?
As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
it is a question worth investigating
given the number of highly unusual encounters
pilots have started sharing with the public.
And while the FAA
continues to dismiss such reports,
another government agency,
one focused on outer space,
is taking notice of possible extraterrestrial activity
on Earth.
NARRATOR: In recent years, more and more pilots
are coming forward
to say that unidentified aerial phenomena
pose a serious risk to the flying public.
The Federal Aviation Administration, however,
continues to downplay the danger.
DOLAN: The FAA is
all about flight safety,
and yet, they don’t accept UFO or UAP reports from civilians.
The FAA is essentially telling you, civilian,
"I don’t care what you’ve encountered,
"and we don’t have to keep statistics on it,
"and we, therefore,
"don’t have to do anything about this impossible phenomenon,
which we don’t know what we could do."
The FAA does not want civilians reporting UFOs
because they don’t want the public stirring the pot.
This is something that could, in theory,
become actionable through FOIA requests, for example.
You can have a civilian saying, "I’d like to know
how many civilians are reporting UFOs to the FAA."
And then what do they do?
How many thousands of reports
are they going to be releasing?
They don’t want to get into that at all.
HENRY: I think it goes to this idea,
not of air traffic safety,
but not wanting to alarm the public.
NARRATOR: But now that the U.S. government
is paying serious attention
to UAP encounters reported by military pilots,
at least one agency is ready to listen
to civilian pilots as well,
and to the surprise of many,
it is America’s top space agency:
NASA.
In October 2022,
NASA assembled a team
of 16 scientists and experts
for a first-of-its-kind investigation
into unidentified aerial phenomena.
In order to collect new data,
the space agency also announced
it is taking over management
of the Aviation Safety Reporting System,
or ASRS,
a public service website that encourages pilots
to submit anonymous reports
regarding UAP sightings.
NASA has something now called
the Aviation Safety Reporting System.
And this is a mechanism
whereby pilots can report
UFO sightings anonymously, if they choose.
And it says on the website, this is non-punitive.
"We will not come after you for this.
There’s no comeback, just make your report."
HENRY: It suggests to me that there’s something else out there.
NASA knows about it,
and they want to know more about it.
And so they are, sort of, surreptitiously saying,
"We’ll listen to your story now.
"We’re collecting a database now
of what is happening in our skies,"
and so that is why I think NASA
is ultimately taking the lead on this.
POPE: People are saying, why NASA?
Why not the FAA? Does it perhaps tie in
with the fact that NASA is now studying UFOs?
Or is it maybe an indication, an intriguing clue
that a lot of the incidents of most import
happen in the real upper atmosphere,
where we are going into space. I-I don’t know,
but that’s... in a sense, that’s not the point.
The point is we now have this receptive environment
into which pilots can finally
speak out about the UFOs
that they are seeing on a very frequent basis.
NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,
encouraging commercial pilots to come forward
with their stories may finally provide critical proof
that civilian aircraft do, in fact,
encounter UAPs in our skies.
HANKS: There’s a deep history of UFO sightings.
And the obvious threat to aviation
is becoming more and more prevalent.
We have to start taking these reports
incredibly seriously because
pilots, crews and passengers could be at risk.
DELGADO: I challenge anybody to take anything you have
and put it out there. Don’t hesitate,
because maybe you’re gonna open the door
to-to bigger and better things for mankind.
NARRATOR: As more civilian pilots come forward
to report their encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena,
will it be revealed that such incidents
occur far more often than we would ever imagine?
And if so, could bringing
these incidents to light also bring us one step closer
to learning the truth about just
who, or what,
has been occupying our airspace
for thousands of years?
Perhaps one day soon,
the strange craft in our skies
will descend to Earth,
and when they do, we will know for certain
that we are not alone.
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