In the early hours of July 24, 1948, Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted, two seasoned pilots, embarked on an extraordinary journey. Both former U.S. Air Force flyers, they were guiding an Eastern Airlines DC-3 from Atlanta to Montgomery, cruising at 5,000 feet. Around 2:45 a.m., their routine flight took a wild turn. Out of nowhere, a bizarre object zipped toward their plane. They later described it as a massive, cigar-shaped thing—about 400 feet long, tearing through the sky at roughly 600 miles an hour. It had no wings, just two rows of glowing white windows and a blue light underneath. As it rocketed past, its wake jolted the DC-3. That encounter stuck with them, and it wasn’t long before stories like theirs started piling up. During the late 1940s and 1950s, UFOs appeared to be attracted to buzzing planes, to the extent that the U.S. military issued a gag order instructing commercial pilots to remain silent about it.
However, in Canada, pilots were exempt from these regulations. In 1966, while travelling from Peru to Mexico City at 35,000 feet, the crew of a Canadian Pacific DC-8 noticed an unusual sight. Captain Roger Millbank was so rattled by it that he filed an official report with Mexican authorities. He said it started with two bright white lights off to the left. Those lights split apart, crept closer, and morphed into colourful, shifting beams that formed a Vshape. Under the full moon’s glow, Millbank swore he saw a structure connecting them—thicker in the middle, like some kind of craft. It hung around near the plane’s left wing for a couple of minutes before vanishing into the night.
Not every UFO run-in was so serious, though. Sometime in the ‘70s, a British Airways jet was cruising just south of Lisbon when the captain got a heads-up from air traffic control about an odd object nearby. Indeed, a bright light appeared in the distance, and shortly a cigar-shaped craft approached the plane. The pilot, clearly enjoying the moment, grabbed the intercom and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you peek out the starboard side, you’ll see what we think is a UFO.” The passengers found the announcement amusing, and the flight successfully landed without any issues.
Things took a darker turn in November 1979, off the coast of Spain. A charter plane flying from Ibiza to the mainland was cruising at 24,000 feet when the pilot spotted a glowing red object barreling straight for them. He yanked the plane into an emergency dive to dodge it, but the thing kept circling, harassing the airliner. Fighter jets scrambled to chase it off, and while people on the ground gawked, the entire fiasco unfolded on radar screens. A year later, almost to the day, another pilot—this time with Iberian Airways—ran into trouble in the same area. Flying at 31,000 feet, he watched a giant green bubble materialize in his path. Six other nearby planes saw it too, and some claimed it even swooped down toward Barcelona Airport.
The strange encounters didn’t stop there. In 1995, a British Airways 737 was lining up to land at Manchester when a UFO buzzed uncomfortably close. Then, on June 12, 1998, a jet bound for Oslo had just lifted off from Heathrow when the captain radioed in, saying they’d nearly collided with a small aircraft. The co-pilot described a blinding light, and the captain later reported that a fighter-sized plane had whipped by, just 50 meters away. Aviation experts, military brass, and police scratched their heads—no one could figure out what it was. They all agreed air travel’s pretty safe, but with mysterious objects like these popping up, maybe it’s a wonder more pilots don’t have stories to tell.