Summary The UFO sighting at O'Hare Airport in 2006 was dismissed as a "hole-punch cloud" by an FAA investigation. Project Blue Book concluded no evidence of extraterrestrial UFOs or security threats to the US. People often mistake ordinary objects or weather phenomena for UFOs.
While Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) is the only airport in the world with eight runways, did you know that it was the scene of a UFO sighting in 2006? At around 16:15 on Tuesday, November 7, 2006, a group of United Airlines employees and several other people saw what they believed to be a flying saucer hovering over the airport for several minutes. While the description of the UFO varies slightly depending on who you asked, they all agreed that the shiny object hovered silently over the apron for several minutes before suddenly disappearing into the sky. A ramp worker spotted the UFO first The incident occurred over Gate C-17 in Terminal 1 and was first spotted by a ramp agent pushing back United Airlines Flight 466, which was to depart Chicago for Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in North Carolina.
The ramp agent advised the flight deck that something was hovering over the plane. The unknown object was then seen by the pilots, cabin crew, a member of United Airlines management, and a mechanic. Despite several people seeing it, no air traffic controller saw the object, and it did not appear on the radar.
Several other people outside the airport reported seeing a dark gray disc-shaped craft hovering over the airport and were adamant that it was not a cloud. The FAA opened an investigation When reporting on the UFO sighting, Chicago Tribune reporter Jon Hilkevitch wrote: "The disc was visible for approximately five minutes and was seen by close to a dozen United Airlines employees, ranging from pilots to supervisors, who heard chatter on the radio and raced out to view it." When asked about their knowledge of the UFO sighting, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and United Airlines denied any knowledge of the incident.
During its investigation into the sighting, the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FAA, which led to an investigation. To comply with the FOIA request, the FAA asked to listen to the air-traffic communications tapes between the employees who reported the sighting and the controllers in the tower. The tapes revealed that a United Airlines supervisor called an FAA manager in the tower to ask if they were aware of the UFO hovering over the plane.
A full review by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concluded that the people had seen a weather phenomenon called a "hole-punch-cloud." When speaking with the Chicago Tribune newspaper, FAA spokesperson Elizabeth Isham Cory said: "That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low (cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things.
" What is a hole-punch-cloud? Also known as a "fallstreak hole," a hole-punch cloud is a large circular or elliptical gap that sometimes appears in cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds. It can occur when the temperature of water vapor in the cloud falls below zero but has not yet turned to ice. Due to a lack of ice nucleation, the water vapor is supercooled rather than turning into ice crystals.
A domino effect creates the supercooled water vapor called the "Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process," which turns some of the supercooled water into tiny ice crystals. As the tiny ice crystals melt, they create a large hole in the cloud. According to Chicago Adler Planetarium astronomer and lecturer Mark Hammergren, the weather conditions on the day of the sighting were right for creating a hole-punch cloud.
Meanwhile, people who routinely investigate UFO sightings say that the FAA's refusal to investigate the O'Hare sighting contradicts the agency's mandate to investigate possible security breaches at American airports. While most people remain skeptical about the existence of alien aircraft visiting Earth, television shows and movies have some people believing that alien aircraft exist and that they visit Earth on a regular basis. Project Blue Book Following the 1947 sighting of what the government said was a secretive Army balloon near Roswell, New Mexico, and a spate of UFO sightings in the 1950s, the United States Air Force (USAF) initiated an investigation it called "Project Blue Book.
" Based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and overseen by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Blue Book had two goals: to determine whether UFOs threatened the national security of the United States and to analyze data collected from UFO sightings scientifically. After collecting thousands of UFO reports, the 1969 University of Colorado UFO Project, a group funded by the United States Air Force, concluded that the study of UFO sightings was unlikely to reveal any scientific discoveries.
As a result of this and another report done by the National Academy of Sciences, Project Blue Book was terminated. A summary of the report published by the USAF said: Of all the reports investigated and analyzed by the Air Force, no evidence suggested a threat to the national security of the United States. No evidence pointed to technological developments that surpassed modern scientific knowledge.
No evidence pointed to the UFOs as being extraterrestrial vehicles. Are UFOs secret government aircraft? While conspiracy theories continue to exist about UFOs and the government keeping the existence of aliens from us, there are many things we see that we often can not explain. In most instances, people mistake UFOs for ordinary objects or weather phenomena.
Some sightings could be secret government aircraft they do not want people to know about. Currently, Lockheed Martin Skunk is working on a hypersonic unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) called "Darkstar." The stealth aircraft is similar in size to an F-22 Raptor and can travel more than five times the speed of sound.
.
