EUGENE, Ore. — It’s making the rounds on Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube: air traffic control calls from several pilots — including at least one confirmed commercial pilot — reporting an unidentified flying object.
The alleged sightings happened between Saturday and Sunday, with the pilots all reporting mysterious flying objects and lights over Eugene.
LiveATC.net, which broadcasts air traffic control transmissions, published the audio from these pilots before it surfaced on YouTube and Reddit.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement on the sightings Wednesday, saying, “A pilot reported seeing unidentified lights while flying in Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center airspace on Saturday, Dec. 7.”
However, when asked by our newsroom, the FAA wouldn’t confirm the authenticity of the audio that’s making the rounds on social media.
According to the audio, the object registered on air traffic control collision avoidance systems, and ATC could be heard telling a pilot that no military activity was occurring in the area.
At 8:39 p.m. Saturday, a United Airlines pilot spoke on the transmission: “Yeah, just straight west of Eugene. I mean it’s — we’re seeing three or four targets. They’re all altitudes up and down; it’s pretty crazy,” the pilot for United flight 1596 said.
The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) also received a report from a different pilot who overheard the chatter over air traffic control channels while making a landing.
That pilot noting the sightings were reported over Eugene around 8:40 p.m. Saturday.
Not long after, a medical evacuation aircraft pilot called in: “Just had another one show up about my 1 o’clock about 1,000 feet high, zipping towards us and then back out towards the ocean,” the pilot under tail number N661LF said. “It’s red in color, um, moving at extreme speeds. I don’t even know how to describe on how it’s moving,”
At one point, air traffic control instructed the pilot to do what it could to avoid a collision.
“Medevac 1LF roger. You are cleared to maneuver as necessary, left and right, to avoid the UFO out there.”
The UFO reporting center said sightings like these are common, but probably don’t involve alien aircraft.
They’re more likely to be SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation, according to the center’s chief technology officer, Christian Stepien.
“It’s a line of really bright lights that pass over you in a perfectly straight line, and most pilots know what those are,” Stepien said. “When the satellites get to where they’re going — to get into their final orbits — they start moving around and doing maneuvers. And they can move into triangular formations; they can move back and forth, they can do patterns, and they can look really bizarre, and a lot of pilots aren’t familiar with that.”
Stepien says Starlink satellites gets high in the sky, and a lot of pilots are reporting the satellites as UFOs.
Pilots from Horizon Airlines were also among those who are believed to have reported the same sighting.
In its newly released annual Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena report, the Department of Defense says its received 1652 reports between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024.
You can find the unclassified version of the report at https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY24-CONSOLIDATED-ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-UAP-508.PDF.
