Radio picks up close encounter over New Mexico
Thirty-six thousand feet above New Mexico was a normal flight to Phoenix. A little over a four-hour flight, that landed three minutes early, but captured audio from the plane tells of a shocking moment above the clouds. (ABC 7 Amarillo-David Furtado)
(KVII) — Thirty-six thousand feet above New Mexico was a normal flight to Phoenix. A little over a four-hour flight, that landed three minutes early, but captured audio from the plane tells of a shocking moment above the clouds.
“Do you have any targets up here?” said the pilot from the cockpit of American Airlines flight 2292.
Not a question pilots want to be asking, and for that flight, that was just the start of their 15-second communication overheard by radio interceptor Steve Douglass, in his airwave capture cave.
“I heard this aircraft, basically, above all other aircraft because the tone in his voice was so excited," said Douglass.
The airline was heading to Phoenix when the event happened over the northwest corner of New Mexico,
“We just had something go right over the top of us,” the pilot told air traffic control. “I hate to say this but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing - moving really fast right over the top of us."
“Talking to an ex-military pilot I know, he says that for them to see this object had to be coming at them practically head-on,” Douglass said. “So whatever it was, came fast and right at them and right over them which gave them a big enough scare they had to report it.”
Now that the report is out there, the FAA has to jump in.
“They meet you at the plane and then they have to discuss the whole thing and do the paperwork to figure out what it was," Douglass said.
According to the audio from the cockpit, the object appears to resemble military firepower, “almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing,” but according to Douglass, who heard this happened real-time, the skies were clear of the military.
“It was a Sunday basically it's a military's day off,” Douglass said.
Nor was there a military test notification.
“When tests occur the military notifies the FAA, aircraft are kept out of the area and their schedules and strict flight lanes at aircraft need to stay in to not interfere with these tests,” said Douglass. “That's not what happened yesterday.”
Douglass says there’s a list of possibilities the FAA must rule out to find the object’s origin, such as branches of military or foreign countries.
Some military branches are reporting odd sightings. The Pentagon released three videos last year showing unidentified areal phenomena, which may have peaked congresses interest.
Hidden in December’s COVID relief bill is a provision that requires US intelligence agencies to tell Congress what they know about UFOs by the middle of this year.
As for American Airlines flight 2292, we await the FAA’s ruling.
American Airlines emailed ABC 7 News the following statement on Tuesday morning:
Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on Feb. 21.
