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Quick Take: Thanks to the work of Mick West (first suggested by @Flarkey) and a few other folks on Twitter, the lights in the video appear to be a reflection of the iPhone 13 Pro, autofocus system with LiDar. I think Ben Hansen should have been the one to discover that but he apparently missed it. But, as you will see, the pilot says he saw anomalous lights before he started recording, which would mean he saw something besides the iPhone autofocus lights. And whatever he saw, was visible to the naked eye. Plus, there may be other witnesses from other planes that were in the area. If that’s the case, it would confirm that something interesting was in the skies that night, off the coast of Los Angeles. If not, this may have been a big waste of time. It’s too early to tell.
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From Ben Hansen’s YouTube:
A retired F-18 Marine Corps pilot was flying a chartered private jet en route to Maui on 8-18-22. He encountered 5 red, rapidly flashing objects that paced his aircraft for 15 minutes and performed circular motions to the side and over the top of his jet. This is a developing story, but we have pre-released ATC radar tape and radio communication exchanges with Los Angeles Center, ADS-B archival data, and footage from inside the cockpit. At least 2 other airline flights reported seeing the objects once they landed. We’re seeking information from any passengers or pilots on other flights in the vicinity. Media enquiries please contact Ben Hansen through benhansen.com.
Ben Hansen – UFO researcher – TV host of discovery+ UFO Witness, Ghosts of Morgan City, Fact or Faked, and host/producer of lots of other things that travel the airwaves
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August 18th, 2022
Los Angeles area – Over the Pacific coast.
Ben has an advanced copy of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) radar tapes and radio chatter. He’s working on a FOIA request so he can also get a downloaded copy of that. Pilot was lucky enough to get footage, as well.
Retired F-18 pilot for Marine Corps – 20+ years experience flying F-18s and also Blackhawk helicopters. He has every imaginable certification license from instructing, to flying both in military and private…in the private sector,…helicopters and jets.
He was flying for a private client from Miami Executive Airport and going to Maui, Hawaii. Around midnight on August 18th, 2022.
Flying into LA airspace at 47,000 feet, flying a Gulfstream G650, traveling .87 Mach, or 668 mph.
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Gulfstream 650 in Flight
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Gulfstream 650 Cockpit View
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Gulfstream 650 Cockpit View
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Gulfstream 650 in Flight
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The pilot notices a group of 2-3 lights that he describes as red in color. They almost take on a pinkish/purplish tint in the video but that just may have been because of his phone. They’re pacing his aircraft. He just left the coast, is heading due west over the ocean, and the lights followed him for what he estimates was 15 mins. Ben spoke to him for well over a few hours over the weekend and he maintains that because they were pacing him and at an altitude above where he was, his best estimate (really hard to judge distance and altitude at night) is they were at least a couple thousand feet above his altitude. That could be 5,000-10,000 feet but he’s at 47,000 feet.
The Gulfstream 650 has a service ceiling of about 51,000 feet. Being a military pilot, he said it’s very unlikely that the jets that DO fly higher than that – the U2, or SR-71, which the pilot says do still fly (SR-71) every now and then – were what he saw. It would take a tremendous turning radius (like a whole state and width) to be able to turn around because of the speeds that they have to fly at those altitudes.
These things were doing circles and kind of orbiting around each other.
Ben asked the pilot if it was possible it was one solid structure and that they weren’t really orbiting but that these very-quickly-flashing, lights were maybe part of structure that was just in circular pattern? Pilot sad, “Well, maybe, except that while I was watching these, a 5th light showed up and the object descended and (pilot was hesitant to say this) it looked like a shooting star. It came down, joined the other four lights and they’re doing these circle patterns. They moved from the right of his aircraft, and above me, to almost directly in front of me, and then pass over the top of my plane so where I can’t see…looking at the cockpit…I can’t see them any more. And then they move back to the right.” So, they didn’t ever go completely right to left, in front of him, but at some point they’re almost directly in front of him.
This really concerned him so he called Air Traffic Control (ATC) – LA Center, at 12:20am on the 18th of August, and he makes the report. The audio/video of that call may not be the full exchange. They have on their screen: The radar tape, which is kind of blurry. This is something that gets released to the public, but the ATCs were so excited about what they were seeing, when he landed, on their own, they took initiative to find him through his company, called him and said, “It wasn’t just you that saw these.” To pilot’s recollection, there was a United and Delta flight as well that had seen the lights but didn’t want to report it over the radio.
“We have multiple witnesses. This is not something occurring in the cockpit, like a reflection off the windscreen of lights inside the cockpit. Definitely not. Others have seen these and he called it in.”
Ben thanks ATC folks for taking the proactive step of contacting the pilot and getting the information out, and he appreciates that the FAA is taking an active interest in this.
The audio is played but it’s impossible to make out a lot of the early exchange because it’s not great quality.
07:21 – 11:34
Pilot: We have some aircraft to our north here, going around in circles. Any idea what they are?
ATC: No, I do not.
Pilot: It’s strange. They’re going around in circles, so…maybe three aircraft.
ATC tells pilot they’re not entering any military airspace and then calls the boss, the operational manager at Los Angeles Operations Center. She tells her boss that the plane reporting the strange objects is 25 miles west of LA at 47,000 feet and, “[the pilot] said that there are three aircraft, high above him, orbiting, and I don’t know quite [what to tell him].”
Boss: “Well, that’s kind weird (laughs).”
ATC: “Should I ask him anything else? He said they were aircraft. I don’t have any hot air space.”
Boss: “I don’t know.”
They both discuss the possibility that these are satellites and she tells her boss that she just wanted to let him know what was going on and the call ends without him offering any advice.
ATC gets back to the pilot and asks for an estimate of altitude and if they are just white lights.
Pilot: “These gotta be at least 5,000 or 10,000 feet above us, on top of us. They just keep going in circles. I was an F-18 pilot in the Marine Corps and I’m telling you, I’ve done many intercepts and I’ve never seen anything like this.”
ATC mentions speaking to the operational manager and the only thing they could think of was satellites, “but I’m sure those aren’t going to be spinning around.”
Pilot: “Absolutely, they’re not satellites. They’re in a big, orbital…just going around each other and then two more came in and then one came down from above them. They just keep circling.”
ATC. I did report it. I wish I could offer you an answer now but unfortunately, I can’t.
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Ben: You could tell he was hesitant at first (I didn’t sense that from the tape. ~Joe), saying he had two or three craft above him. And then he asked the ATC if they had anything on radar. She said, “No, I don’t.”
(From what I heard, it didn’t sound like he asked about radar but the audio is so bad, it’s possible I misunderstood. This is what I heard. ~Joe)
Pilot: We have some aircraft to our north here, going around in circles. Any idea what they are?
ATC: No, I do not.
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Ben: When ATC called her supervisor, she said she didn’t have any hot air space, which means there’s no military activity planned or that they’ve been warned of, in that area. Ben says, in the west, many times, off the coast (since he flies there a lot), there’s warning notifications put out…NOTAMs (Notice to Airman) as to exercise those training routes and there’s nothing going on.
Ben: “[The pilot’s] credibility and what he was telling me about actual intercepts he has made…we’ll get into a little bit later in a different video. But this is the first time he’s visually seen anything.”
We can rule out satellites. This is not Starlink. “They look very, very different and travel in a single line. They can flash and shimmer but they do not do this. And they do not fly and change position from…looking 5,000-10,000 feet above your altitude, to going in front of your plane, and then back again. Definitely not satellite activity that we’re looking at here. And it’s not something that he’s seeing in the windscreen because we have other witnesses.
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Videos the pilot shot can be seen at:
16:28 – 16:42 and 17:02 – 17:16
He taped the primary flight display, which shows the altitude indicator and elevation and a whole lot more. For those who want those details, watch 13:53 – 15:38.
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Primary Flight Display
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The footage isn’t spectacular because an iPhone, “doesn’t do well in low light. These lights are very bright and the flash pattern is not like anything conventional.”
Alleged UAP Footage #1 – 16:29 – 16:42
Alleged UAP Footage #2 – in Slo Mo – 17:03 – 17:15
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“I know some of you who are really hard to please. I’m not here to entertain you (laughs). We’re really lucky he filmed anything. He’s got a lot going in the cockpit. He’s trying to talk to ATC, he’s trying to figure out how to get the best angle to film this.”
As he filmed the flight display and lights, the instrument shows he was 15 miles or so, southwest of the Santa Barbara Channel Islands and it was 12:20am when he first started seeing these lights.
“Remember, they trailed him, they paced him for at least 15 minutes. 15 minutes, it’s matching his speed of his craft, and they’re dancing in front of him, going above him, [and] going back. You saw that zip by pretty quickly. So he’s witnessing this whole thing, trying to search and see where they’re at now, and he starts filming again.
18:38 – 18:43 – More lights, slo-mo.
19:42 – 21:32 – He’s 25 miles west of LAX (airport), roughly, and you see the city lights below. He’s looking due north, out the right side of his aircraft. Ben believes it’s probably the San Pedro area, looking into downtown LA but not quite as far as the Channel Islands.
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“”The pattern is not easily explainable. Wow! The pattern seems to be: Either going around a solid structure – there’s a point where it looks almost triangular – to random, separate craft that are kind of joining together. So the best argument for separate objects is that that 5th light, which is not shown on the video, but he said joined, and it came down like a shooting star, and then joined the other ones.”
What Is It?
Drones? Okay. Going .87 Mach, or 668 mph. A conventional drone at that altitude (over 50,000 feet or so) and, “moving at that speed and not only moving forward with him, but then changing direction rapidly to come across the top of him and over the top in that turning radius…we’re not talking about off-the-shelf drones.” If its foreign adversarial, “we’re in deep trouble if that’s somebody else’s drones making maneuvers like that. Because it’s gotta be using some alternative propulsion and inertia-displacing system.”
“We’ve got, very, very fast objects or object. “
23:07 – 23:46 – Interesting side note that the pilot pointed out to Ben while they were on the phone: Towards the tail end of that video segment, there’s a purplish/pink beam that appears to be coming down in the upper left quadrant. Ben’s initial thought was it’s some sort of a lens flare or a reflection caused by the windshield from a really bright light source in front of the aircraft. The Moon? No, because Ben reached out to Marc D’Antonio, MUFON’s chief photo analyst, and the Moon was in the northeast . Plane was heading west so very unlikely this was caused by the Moon. “It could be a very bright star, I suppose, or something, that’s causing that.”
“What we do know is that the lights themselves definitely are not reflections. We. have those two airlines…that had witnessed them. We DO know that they’re not showing up on radar, so whatever these objects are, being solid craft is an assumption, but they’re not showing up radar. So there’s some type of signature management or something going on to why, both his TCAS, which is his onboard radar, is not picking them up, and neither is ATC. Yet people, other pilots, are seeing them, visually, in the sky. ”
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Ben continues to get more information on this developing story/case.
25:49 – 26:47 – Final (of three), brief video. Pilot told Ben he believes this video was the last time that, whatever this was, flew over the top of his craft. Just as the video is ending, they kind of disappear and are pretty much directly in front of him and go over the top of his plane, and he was not able to see them again after that.
To repeat: The duration of this event was 15 mins.
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The ADS-B (see video above) is like a transponder and is now mandatory for most air spaces, for all aircraft to have. It gives you the identification of each aircraft. According to ADS-B, he was going due west. Delta 41 was also there and might have also witnessed this event.
ADS-B also shows there were no flight plans in the area just north of where the Gulfstream (featuring our pilot witness) was flying. No general aviation, military or commercial traffic in the direction (north) of where he took that video.
If you know anybody who was on the flights that left right before or after this event with the Gulfstream, and who may have also seen this: Fiji Airways Flight 811 – Air France Flight 78 – Qantas Flight 12 and United Flight 2650.
It happened between 12:20am – 12:40am on 8/18/22 – Contact Ben. He posts most of his updates on Twitter and Facebook.
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The next day…
Pilot lands in Maui and the ATC tracked him down and gave him a copy of the taped footage. “There is information, if true, that the actual tapes might be corrupted or deleted.” Ben says he doesn’t want to jump to any conclusions because that’s not even verified yet. “I would hate to think that it was deliberately done, if it happened.” Even Ben’s copy was somewhat corrupted so he doesn’t know what’s going on yet. ATC also gave the pilot a number to call to make report and he wasn’t sure who he was talking to, just that it was a government agency in Washington, DC. Ben traced down the number to the Joint Air Traffic Operations Command, or JATOC, Air Traffic Security Coordinator.
He thinks this is great because it shows the FAA is taking it seriously by kicking it up the food chain. They said they already had the radar tapes and the reports from ATC. Apparently, there was talk of them compiling this to include this in the Congressional data reports for the next round of UAP hearings.
Ben: Stay tuned bc things are about to get interesting in the next year.
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All related tweets that folks might find interesting…
BREAKING NOW: Retired F-18 pilot flying a Gulf Stream on 8/18 encounters red, rapidly flashing UAPs pacing his aircraft for 15 minutes at Mach .87 circling and crossing overtop at +50,000ft. L.A. ATC radar tape & radio with video from inside cockpit. https://t.co/s4IKE3F9UK
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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This is a developing story, but at least 2 other airline flights reported seeing the objects once they landed. I'm looking for passengers and/or other pilots who witnessed the UAPs. At the end of the video I've identified commercial flights that may have witnessed them.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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The Gulf Stream 650 is considered a "dark cockpit". The pilot explained that if anything is flashing, then it means there is a warning or malfunction. More importantly, the lights were seen moving from the right, to the front, to over the plane and other pilots reported them.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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Noted debunker, Mick West, had a take on the lights that’s worth checking out. You can see the comparison below or by clicking on this link:
[UPDATE – the flashing lights in the video appear to be reflections of the iPhone 13 Pro autofocus system. First suggested by @flarkey]
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I really do respect most of @mickwest 's contributions and this is something that needs to be addressed due to the similarity. In this case however, the objects were observed outside the cockpit for several minutes and the call to ATC before he picked up the phone to record. https://t.co/olgwmaMyeP
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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Then this video is NOT of what he saw (and he DID see something), rather it is an attempt he made to capture it but accidentally caught IR illuminators from his phone.
— Caden Schaefer (@CKakadan) August 30, 2022
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Can Ben confirm that this is the case? i.e. one assumes that once he got hold of the vid, he confirmed with the pilot that it was the flashing lights far left frame in the vid which the pilot was also seeing with the naked eye??
— Fin365 (@fin365) August 30, 2022
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https://twitter.com/thewoody/status/1564697569166389248
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Yes, there is always the chance that what he captured is not exactly what he remembers seeing. I've forwarded him the comparison and he's very open to consider it. It doesn't however negate his military flight experience or the direct visual that prompted him to record.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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As this develops, I expect he will probably want to do an on-camera interview to address the sighting and recording as specifically as he can remember. He's adamant that what he saw before recording was spectacular and as he described.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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Also important to the sequence of events is that he just told me he only first reviewed the videos after the lights had all disappeared. So he didn't know if anything had been captured in the camera as he was observing them directly fly over the top of his jet and back again.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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https://twitter.com/thewoody/status/1564773952810934272
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The annunciators can be dimmed or turned off, especially when you're flying over the Pacific and need your night vision. More than likely there are also differences in the model versions. This was a 650ER.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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Many criminal convictions don't succeed because the burden placed on technology to "witness" for us is impractical. Consequently, the value of eye witness testimony is diminished. As in all investigations, UAP accounts should be weighed by the totality of the circumstances.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 30, 2022
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Here’s the Metabunk thread dealing with this case. It’s still active with updates.
And Mick West posted (as an attachment) the MUFON report filed by the pilot, as seen below.
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I can confirm that someone from MUFON did contact him and interviewed him. That report does appear to be consistent with what he said if it was taken directly on MUFON's site.
— Ben Hansen (@BenHansen00) August 31, 2022
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Great effort by Ben Hansen, but again, thanks to the work of Mick West, @flarkey and a few others, the lights on the video appear to be a reflection of the iPhone 13 Pro autofocus system.
Ben said: The pilot noticed a group of 2-3 lights that he described as red in color. They almost took on a pinkish/purplish tint in the video but that just may have been because of his phone.
Well, I have no doubt that it WAS because of his phone: Those were the autofocus LiDar lights.
The pilot claims he saw anomalous lights, visible to the naked eye, in a circular formation, before he started recording. If true, then the pilot saw something different than what’s on the video and thus, that wasn’t captured on his iPhone. If not, we all got excited over reflections of iPhone lights. The key here is to see if any witnesses from other planes in the area reported similar, anomalous lights. If they did, it will go a long way to proving something interesting was off the coast of Los Angeles on August 18th, 2022. If not, this story will die a quick death. As Ben said, let’s wait until all the evidence is collected and then we can look at it in total.
I will add any important updates right here, as I see them.
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Update – September 5th, 2022
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Ben starts off by doing what I did to start off this blog the other day. And that is, thanking and giving credit to, Mick West for his autofocus/LiDAR explanation. When I saw the comparison, I had little doubt he and the others were right about that.
Ben Hanson (BH): “I do believe, at this point, that he is correct, in that…this little pinkish/purplish light that shows up and flashes in the videos that were recorded by the pilot, are in fact, the infrared, autofocus light that comes on and is sometimes seen in reflections of mirrors, and glass, if the conditions are dark enough. I don’t fault the pilot for not knowing this. In fact, I don’t fault myself. I like to think that I’m pretty up on technology and artifacts introduced in the cameras, however, this only came about in the past year or two when they started adding the autofocus and LiDAR technology to iPhones and smartphones, okay?
So, it’s something that we always have to keep testing and trying and, you know, trying to find out if we can explain, because technology changes so quickly. You also have to remember that what Mick West suggested the pyramid-shaped UFO, that they addressed in, actually, the UFO congressional hearing. This pyramid-shaped UFO that Jeremy Corbell had put forward, it was dubbed, pyramid-shaped…the pyramid shape. I took one of Mick West’s suggestions and went out with my night vision and re-created what we call the bokeh effect. So that, I believe, is why it is shaped in pyramid form. However – and this is really important, with this case as well – don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. Okay? Some of these cases have a lot of nuance, and we want the evidence to be in the video. We went it there, we wanna make up our minds. It is, or it isn’t extraordinary, and boom, case closed. Okay?
In the case with the Corbell video and the bokeh effect, my conclusion is the shape of it could very well be created by the aperture of the night vision. That does not, however, explain in my mind, the unusual flight characteristics of how long these drone swarms were in the area, the related thermal camera that what appears to be going down into the water, the fact that they couldn’t track these things and they talked about anti-drone technology not being able to bring them down. All of that is concerning, and is unconventional in my mind. It has not yet been solved. Okay?
So in this case, Mick West deserves credit and I think people should be open to any person who takes a rational approach and offers explanations, and take a look into it. So what happens, walking you through this really quick, I will put up the video here. You can see the video that he took of the city lights, he was trying to establish the city lights as he was setting up his cockpit for the next transition into the next radar, you know, airspace. And he’s setting up everything, so he’s busy in the cockpit but he’s scanning the skies. And the other video, he took a picture of his instrumentation to establish what was there. And in this case, as well, you can see that he wasn’t expecting to capture anything because the video’s shaky in the cockpit, and that’s when the pinkish lights, you know, are captured in the very corner. So what I was trying to establish in my questioning to him was: Were you actually, directly seeing the object, in the case like the video of the city, where you were then trying to record what you’re seeing? Are you seeing the same thing, at the time you’re trying to record? And he was very honest with me and transparent, and he said, “You know what? I don’t know.”
If you think about it, he’s got three videos less than a minute long, an event that happened fifteen, twenty minutes long. And so he’s really just trying to study the phone against the window, and take some video as he’s scanning the skies. Okay, so he’s looking up, he’s looking around, you know, it’s straining because at the top of the cockpit, the things are going up over him, and he wasn’t sure if he was capturing anything at all. So, having explained that, it seems very rational to me, but he’s very adamant about one thing: He saw objects that have no conventional explanation in his mind. His credentials as a military pilot, you know…he knows what should and should not be in the sky and the capabilities of different aircraft. And he’s seeing these things rotating around each other, above his altitude, going from right, to over the top, to in front of him. And it’s enough that he calls air traffic control, reports it, and all of this happens before he even picks up his iPhone to start recording. So, in my mind, these are two separate issues. He’s very adamant. In fact, he has what I call, witness remorse, right now. It’s been really difficult for him because he wanted it to be something in the video, he wanted there to be evidence of what he saw. And I said, “You know what? It doesn’t matter. You really should forget what other people say, You know what you saw. Separate the video apart from it. It would have been great if you did capture something.” But he’s kind of a changed, man. We can get into that later, but, he’s bought new cameras for his cockpit to film all the time when he’s flying. He really wants to capture something now, because he is disappointed, but that doesn’t change what he saw and what he reported. Okay?
So, where does that leave us now? We would love to find other witness testimony. I myself love corroborating witnesses, collateral witnesses, because the credibility of one, you know, very credible, in my mind, military pilot, is great, but it would be great if we had other aircraft who saw things in the sky. Well, we do. All right? Now, to set this up, I need to explain, briefly, I’ll pull up this map.
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BH: This is a Los Angeles center, air traffic control sector map and we’re looking at Sectors 25 and 28. Okay, just off the coast, to the west of LAX, and Catalina, Santa Barbara, actually going all the way up to Santa Barbara here. This sector, obviously, it’s divided up because not one controller can handle the whole area. So, if you go to www.liveatc.net, there’s live feeds, okay? People/volunteers, they have scanners, radios that they feed into this website, and they’re capturing audio from air traffic control. The audio you’re about to hear is garbled, okay? It’s very low and I’m gonna have to boost it up. When I started out as a pilot, it took me a long time to understand anything that controllers and pilots said. So, even though I’m gonna try and transcribe a lot of what you’re hearing, there’s parts of it even that I can’t hear that are too scratchy. Okay, that’s because the scanners that are picking these up, sometimes, they’re only getting the most powerful radio signal coming from air traffic control, but they’re not getting the pilot side of the conversation. Because that pilot could be a couple 100 miles out over the ocean. All right? So sometimes you only hear what air traffic control is saying. That’s why we filed a FOIA request. Those audio tapes that come back from the FOIA, because it’s recorded at air traffic control facility, you’ll get the controller and you’ll get the pilot side of it. Okay?
So, having said that, American Airlines Flight number Six, coming in from Honolulu. And now, that one’s coming from west to east. It passes Twilight 670, which this pilot was flying out to Hawaii. I would say my best estimate right now, it was about 20 minutes, up to 40 minutes after when they pass each other. And now American Airlines is heading in. And I’m going to put that map up right here, so you can see it way out over the ocean (segment cued up below).
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BH: There, you have Twilight’s 670. And you can see that American is passing, the opposite direction, United 2650. 2650, if you remember, was one of the airlines that I had highlighted before, that may have seen something. Air traffic control said that they were about 70 miles behind our pilot in Twilight 670. So, they’re trailing him, and they did make some radio calls. I won’t play it here in the interest of time. But the controller was asking them to be on the lookout for these objects that the pilot had reported. And at the end of it, United says they didn’t see anything. Now, I will point out, it may or may not be a factor, but you can see the altitude of United 2650 is 34,000 feet. So, they’re actually 13,000 feet below the altitude of the Gulfstream. And it may not seem like much, but five to 10,000 feet in altitude can make a big difference in what you’re able to see with air traffic when you’re flying around. And especially depending on the size of the objects. A typical-sized plane, that’s like two miles away, right? In altitude.
American Airlines, on the other hand, if you take a look at where they’re at, they’re 39,000 feet, which is only 8000 feet below Twilight 670. Or, in other words, like a mile and a half. So, quite a bit closer. May or may not have any factor in this as to why they were able to see something and United was not. But I’m gonna play the audio for you now, and I do owe another shout out to a YouTube user named PDGLS. So they made a comment on the YouTube video and pointed me to a compilation that they had made of air traffic communications that occurred up to an hour after Twilight 670 passed through. And it’s because of them that I went to the files. So again, this is going to be really low and garbled, but I’ll transcribe what we do hear, and then hopefully, when the FOIA comes in, we’ll hear the full communications from this other side. But what you’re going to hear, to me, is quite interesting (Cued up below).
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Air Traffic Control (ATC): “American 6, LA Center. Earlier, probably about twenty minutes ago, I had an aircraft that was outbound at 47,000 feet, and they reported multiple aircraft above them, circling. I just wondered if you saw anything? That was probably between LA and Venti, they reported it several times, and they said that if you’re looking at the Big Dipper, it was near that.
Roger, yeah, that’s what we thought it was here, but the guy said he was a retired F-18 pilot, and he’d never seen anything like it, and it was definitely aircraft. So I was just wondering if you had seen anything. Roger, thanks. I wish we knew what it was. Yeah.”
BH: So the best we can tell that takes place at about 1:21am local time or 08:21 Zulu. And the controller, as soon as American Airlines enters her sector, updates him on the information because they’re in a good position to possibly see something. So, he kind of immediately responds, and we’re only hearing the one side of this, again, because the scanner doesn’t pick up the pilot side of it from this far out. But we’re left to guess that the conversation, from what she says, “That’s what we were thinking, too,” is referring to what I showed in the other video where we have her calling the higher up, her supervisor, and they’re kind of, you know, joking about Elon Musk, and maybe satellites or things like that. So, I’m guessing she…talking to the pilot, the pilot made the suggestion, it might be a satellite or it might be a rocket launch, and she says, “That’s what we were thinking, too,” okay?
Now there’s silence, for about 27 minutes until approximately 1:48am, American Airlines, on their own, is going to initiate contact with air traffic control, and this is the part where you can now hear the pilot speaking, but it’s going to be really low and I’m going to transcribe what’s going.
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L.A. Center: American 6, go.
Pilot: Yeah, we’re seeing some bright lights now off to the north of us, well above the horizon. It gets real bright, and it gets dimmer. It’s in the same general area, but it’s in a different spot.
L.A. Center: American 6, roger. And you said that was to the north of you? And now long was that happening because I think that’s probably the same thing that other aircraft is seeing.
Pilot: Yeah, it’s not (unintelligible) continuously, but maybe 10 seconds apart. Umm, different brought lights come on, get bright, and then go dim.
L.A. Center: American 6, roger, thank you. I’ll report that because they were asking…up higher, if I had any more reports, so thanks.
Pilot: You’re welcome.
L.A. Center: And American 6, thanks for that. It has been reported and you can connect L.A. Center now, one one niner point niner five (119.95).
Pilot: Roger, niner five. American 6, goodnight.
~~~
BH: So there you have it, the straight up audio of what happened. I think it’s quite noteworthy for a few reasons. So, remember, the controller asked them at about 08:20, which would have been 1:20am, to be on the lookout because they knew that they would be passing through that same area. And it was about twenty something minutes before American Airlines comes back to them and says, “We’re seeing something.” Okay? So pilots, they don’t have the time or anything to just make stuff up or, you know, like, tell the controller what they want to hear. This is very serious when you’re talking to controllers and giving them information that could impact the safety of a flight. They know that’s what they’re looking for. And so, when they come up and say, “We’re seeing some bright lights, now off to the north of us, well above the horizon,” he talks about the lights getting really bright and then dim, and it’s in the same general area, I believe he says it’s not continual, or not continuous. We clearly hear that it’s in ten-second intervals. Now again, I hope that we get the FOIA request of the audio tapes will give us the other side of the conversation. But we get the gist of it.
~~~
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BH: Now I’m going to overlay a map here (Map is Above) and you can see where American 6 would have been crossing. And in the same map, here you see the Gulfstream going the other way, and it was almost…looks like about an hour before. It would have been over an hour and a bit, before when they would have crossed that same area and where the Gulfstream first started seeing things. Now this is really interesting because even though the description is not that detailed, we don’t know if these lights were actually moving. We’re not going to jump to any assumptions here that these lights are explainable. But they were mysterious enough, that American 6 report seeing them, and tells air traffic control. And you can hear her say, “Yeah, well, the higher ups wanted to know more about this.” In fact, if we had time, I would play for you more audio, because she reached out to, like I said, the United flight and ask them, and also reached out to this plane right here.
BH: Now it comes up, initially, unidentified, and it has no call sign, which some of them don’t. But as they get closer, the ATS-B does provide that information.
BH: It says it’s a K35R. And when the information pops up, we see that’s a KC-135, and it’s owned by the Air Force. They don’t show a destination of where they’re headed, but they were coming out of Honolulu and the controller is now talking to them. So, they’re not going to provide any information, either, but she does provide a little bit more of the whole sighting and what everyone is seeing. So just for fun, let’s go ahead and play that.
~~~
ATC: Rummy93, I have a few aircraft that have reported a…multiple aircraft or lights in circles between LA and the Estel area. Could you let me know if you see anything like that? They said it was probably around 50,000-plus feet. That’s the best description I could get. One of the guys was a retired F-18 pilot. He said he’d never seen anything like it, but it looks like multiple aircraft going in circles at a very high altitude. Well, the most recent report was probably about 30 minutes ago, maybe 150 miles ahead of you. The report before that, he had reported it from, probably 20 miles west of LA, all the way to 280 miles west of LA. Headed west, reported it the north side of him. Said that it was near the Big Dipper at the time, but the sky has moved since then so I’m not sure exactly where it would be. Yeah, thank you. Let me know if you…
BH: So the audio is pretty clear on that, that’s why I’m not gonna attempt to transcribe it. And I want to, again, thank the YouTube commenter who compiled it because they took all the dead airspace out. So it’s really not in live time, it didn’t happen that quickly. Obviously, she’s hearing the pilot side of it. But there’s one part I do have of the pilot responding, but it’s unintelligible, it’s not even worth posting. But we’re led to understand that he did not see anything, okay? At the end of his leaving the sector. So well over two hours goes by the controllers calling out any airline who might be in the area pas sing through and transiting telling them to be on the lookout, giving them those reports of what the now two different pilots had seen things, the Gulf Stream, and now American Airlines reporting something very mysterious as well. At this point, we do not know if it’s the same phenomenon. So I have to stress that, because the characteristics, we haven’t talked to the American Airlines pilots, we have no information at this point. So they’re seeing bright lights that are getting really intense and dimming and Gulfstream is seeing objects that are going in circles and transiting from his right side over the top of his aircraft and pacing him. So could be two different things. We don’t know at this point, but very coincidental that it happens in the same area. And within probably less than an hour, that phenomenon is still occurring in that area. All right. So what does this all mean? Well, like I said, this is a developing story, I can tell you that. I’ve talked with people indirectly, who work in the control facility, and it would seem that we would be surprised how much activity is going on there. Our pilot spoke to Jay talk the next day in Pennsylvania, the joint Air Traffic Operations Command. And according to his recollection, there was some talk of how active the area is there as well. And if you remember to, he was told the next day, the the air traffic control, who tracked him down and called him said there were reports from other airlines. Now remember, go back and read or see the video if you want. But those other airlines, at least two were named according his recollection to different airlines who did not want to talk on the radio. Okay, so what I just played for you here is American Airlines who was on the radio. So it is possible, we’re looking at up to three different airlines at this point, who are reporting unusual activity, same night, same area. And it’s noteworthy enough that it’s come to their attention that this is significant, they can’t explain it. And it’s been reported to the higher ups. So that’s where it is. All right. So to wrap this up, I do have one more thing for you because I was getting tweets and messages from people saying, Here’s a video from tick tock, and I’ll pull that up right here. And and this comes from a pilot named Trent. Okay, and you can see his handle there flying high. Now, people this is really strange, because Mick West sent this to me and others, saying, is this your pilot? Is this the guy you’ve been talking to? Apparently, on August 10. This pilot and his captain posted a little video of them talking about a UFO sighting they had. All right, and then on August 17, he posted an update saying that part of his sighting was explainable as the IR light from their iPhone that was reflecting in the window. Now, August 18th is when the Gulfstream has their sighting. And as my feeling is right now, what was captured in that video was also IR light again, not discounting actually, you know, what he directly observed at all. But this was the same light, our Gulfstream pilot, same explanation that this IR light was causing that reflection, and which is very coincidental. Right? The both would happen kind of the same time and they both kind of figure out what what had happened there. But I will do a deep dive with Trent I plan on doing it might take me a week or two because I’m going to be out of town. I can guarantee you that people are going to be the site dissecting trends videos, because he had at least two incidents and one of them captured on camera where he was heading into lax about an hour out same location and almost exactly the same description the American Airlines had of this light that gets really really bright and then gets dim. Right. He saw this it one time heading into LA and then also So, heading away from Honolulu, a couple hours out, where there were multiple, at least three or four aircraft that were flying alongside of them, they talk plane to plane on a certain frequency. And they were saying, Do you guys see this? And they were talking about what they were seeing. And this video, like I said, we’ll be dissected. And probably people will put more emphasis on the video than the witness testimony is many do. But the fact is, people are seeing perhaps a new phenomenon we don’t know yet at this point. And maybe it’s explainable, maybe it’s not. I will say if you go and look at trends videos, he did mistake Starlink initially, which a lot of people do, and he’s, he’s very transparent about things that can be explained. And so, at this point, though, there, there doesn’t seem to be an explanation for what these pilots had seen. So I will keep you updated. And thanks for watching.
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