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View From Above: UAP Witnessed From the Air
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A closer look at UAP sightings reported by pilots, flight crews, and passengers during flight

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Most UAP are sighting from the ground, with someone looking up. This collection has a different vantage point: from the air. It brings together firsthand accounts from pilots, aircrew, and passengers who watched something unexplained unfold up high.

Many of these witnesses have a professional training and are used to assessing other aircrafts' distance, speed, and potential threats. Aircrew routinely monitor instruments, traffic, and the activity around their aircraft. Enigma’s database captures these airborne encounters across decades, continents, and multiple air forces, from routine commercial flights to active military missions.

Notable Encounters

Among the airborne UAP reports in Enigma’s database, a handful stand out:

  • "A black object darted past at eye level... right next to my plane." Filming the New York skyline on a flight home from Myrtle Beach, a passenger looking through a plane window caught a dark object zooming past in real time. On review, the footage showed a fast-moving black object streak past just outside the aircraft. It's one of the most-discussed reports in Enigma's database. Enigma #290972 , March 26, 2024, New York City, New York.
  • "I'm an airline pilot. I was flying a route from Leeds Bradford to Faro... I saw something heading straight for us. It was a solid black disc." A UK airline pilot broke out of cloud cover at 6,500 feet and saw a disc with two red lights and triangular fins turn straight toward the aircraft before banking away. Enigma #301863 , March 29, 2022, Bury, England, UK.
  • "We were cruising at 43,000 ft and saw this light for over an hour." An airline pilot and crew watched a light split into a triangle formation of three lights during a flight, and confirmed with air traffic control that no military aircraft were showing on radar at their position. Enigma #285079 , November 1, 2023, Alburquerque, Spain.
  • "We were at 40,000 feet in a challenger." Flying a private jet from Fayetteville, Arkansas toward Las Vegas, the pilot and passengers watched lights dim in and out roughly 40 times over a half-hour period — a sighting sustained long enough to rule out a momentary glare or reflection. Enigma #292052 , April 26, 2024, Woodland Hills, California.

Military Sightings

The UAP record includes a long history of military encounters, from the 1948 Mantell case to the Rendlesham Forest encounter and the USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” incident . Enigma’s database contains a smaller but notable collection of firsthand airborne reports from military personnel, spanning decades and multiple air forces, from training flights to active missions.

  • A weapons officer's sunset sighting over France. From the rear seat of a military aircraft, a 14-year French Air Force veteran serving as a weapons systems officer watched an unexplained object cross the flight deck view as the sun set during a 2021 mission. Enigma #279753 , February 9, 2021, Mérignac, France.
  • “We all know what we saw." A RAAF Hercules flight deck. During a Royal Australian Air Force C-130E Hercules training flight over Western Australia, a maintenance crewman and all three flight-deck crew reportedly watched a metallic disc, described as “about twice the size of our C130,” pass roughly 1,000 feet below them. The commanding officer later instructed the crew to say only that they had “seen something,” warning that saying more could end their careers. Enigma #290524 , March 23, 1995, Shark Bay, Western Australia.

PURSUE, or the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, is a recent U.S. government effort to declassify and publicly release unresolved UAP records held across federal agencies. Its rolling releases have included hundreds of records, including videos and interviews involving military personnel and aircraft.

Highlights include:

  • A Minnesota Air National Guard F-16C, mid-intercept. On February 12, 2023, an F-16C scrambled from Madison, Wisconsin, and shot down an unidentified octagonal object over Lake Huron. It was one of four aerial intercepts across North America in the eight days following the Chinese spy balloon incident. Newly released infrared footage from the jet’s Advanced Targeting Pod shows the object fragmenting on impact. The wreckage was never recovered, and AARO’s assessment that it was likely balloon-like remains officially unconfirmed. Sighting #332560 , February 12, 2023, Lake Huron.
  • A fifth-generation fighter’s sensor suite, over North America. Infrared video recorded by a fifth-generation aircraft, likely an F-35, while operating in NORTHCOM’s area of responsibility. The recording is among the PURSUE archive’s earliest UAP cases attributed to the sensor suite of a stealth aircraft. Sighting #332529 , January 20, 2023, undisclosed location, NORTHCOM area of responsibility.
  • A Coast Guard patrol aircraft’s “Tic Tac” capture. A U.S. Coast Guard C-144A Ocean Sentry flying a maritime patrol mission near Tyndall Air Force Base recorded an elongated infrared heat signature resembling the “Tic Tac” UAP associated with the 2004 USS Nimitz encounter. The case is also notable because it involves a service branch outside the Department of War. Sighting #332528 , April 24, 2024, near Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.
  • FBI FD-302 interview: a pilot’s recurring sightings. In March 2024, the FBI formally interviewed a commercial and corporate pilot and former military reservist about a pattern of unexplained lights that other pilots had reportedly been discussing since October 2023. His account included a flight from Boston to Dublin near Gander, Canada, at 37,000 feet, as well as video recorded over the central United States the following February. Sighting #335209 , March 1, 2024, near Gander, Newfoundland, Canada.

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Why An Aerial Vantage Point is Interesting

Observing UAP in higher airspace is a unique and fresh perspective, and potentially an opportunity to study any anomalous phenomenon from a different vantage point. Perhaps UAP behave or maneuver differently high up than they do close to the ground?

An object seen from 35,000 feet also eliminates many of the explanations that commonly account for sightings from the ground. There are no nearby streetlights, headlights, and hobbyist drones. Pilots are trained to recognize aircraft, assess their relative speed and altitude, and distinguish familiar lighting configurations. That makes their reporting particularly useful when what they observe cannot be matched to conventional aircraft activity. In many cases, air traffic control found no corresponding aircraft traffic on radar. Other interesting cases include objects that appear to track an aircraft for extended periods, or singular objects splitting into formations. Taken together, these accounts offer a rare view of unusual aerial activity from the perspective of those who encountered it firsthand, in the air.

We’ve curated some of the most compelling airborne sightings into this collection, which you can explore below.

Sightings (157)