Several sightings of an unidentified object flying at “astronomical” speed before disappearing off the coast of Ireland has sparked an investigation by the Irish Aviation Authority.
The UFO was first spotted by a baffled British Airways pilot last Friday (November 9) at approximately 6:47am local time while flying over the south-west coast of Ireland.
The pilot was flying a Boeing 787 from Heathrow to Montreal when he made a call to Shannon Air Traffic Control (ATC) to ask if there were military exercises taking place in the airspace.
You can listen to the archived recording of the call from 17 minutes here.
ATC said there were no military exercises underway and added: “There is nothing showing on either primary or secondary [radar].”
“OK. It was moving so fast,” the pilot replied. “Alongside you?” asked the controller. The pilot went on to describe the UFO that appeared along the left side of the aircraft and then “rapidly veered to the north.”
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The pilot said they saw “a bright light” that “disappeared at very high speed.” She said that she did not believe it to be on a collision course but was “wondering” what it could be.
A Virgin Airlines Boeing 747 pilot then joined the conversation to suggest that a meteor or some other object was re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The pilot said there were “multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory,” and that they were “very bright where we were.”
When Shannon ATC asked the pilots which direction the objects were heading, the Virgin Airlines pilot said it was in his “eleven o’clock position” with “two bright lights over to the right,” that then climbed away at speed. “Very interesting, that one,” said the pilot.
After a third pilot chimed in to say “Glad it wasn’t just me,” and reported a UFO that was “astronomical, it was like Mach 2,” (2,500kph or twice the speed of sound), Shannon ATC told the BA pilot that “other aircraft in the air have also reported the same thing so we are going to have a look and see.”
The Irish Aviation Authority said they had filed a report of the “unusual air activity” following reports from a “small number of aircraft on Friday.”
“This report will be investigated under the normal confidential occurrence investigation process,” read the IAA statement to the Irish Examiner.
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