Colored lights from airplane flight deck

J

johne1618

Guest
Sighting Basics
Case120183
Occurred2022-01-03 01:00
Reported2022-01-06 09:52
(Reported 3 Days Later)
SourceMUFON
SummaryWas flying as flight crew for an airline when noticed the object appear right after another aircraft flew over us at 40k feet. short video uploaded

Detailed Description
Was flying along at 39,000 feet in an airbus a320 somewhere over georgia. took out my phone to take photos of the beautiful milky way. using the new iphone 13 pro max. tried to take a video of another aircraft flying just above us opposite direction at 40,000 ft. as i was filming this aircraft fly over us, i noticed this v shaped object appear. it appears to be between us and the other aircraft. both captain and i agreed we would like to remain anonymous. i will share the video i took. at the end i zoom briefly to the instruments to give perspective. nothing was reported to faa or atc.

Source: https://ufostalker.com/sighting/120183

Video of incident



Sequence of screenshots seeming to show airplane flying above lights

before.jpg


1.jpg


2.jpg


after.jpg

Shot of instrument panel at end

instruments.jpg

Were the lights reflections of cockpit lights? If so it's strange that they all quickly appear at the same time. I suppose that would only happen if there was some major situation happening with the aircraft. Also I guess above 39,000 ft it is too high for flares. If they were flares left by an aircraft I suppose one would expect to see lights on the aircraft.
 
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The lights have much more distinctive shapes than you show there. And these shapes are fairly consistent through the video.
2022-01-17_07-42-18.jpg

Sometimes there are more lights visible,

2022-01-17_07-45-05.jpg
Kind of look like dials in a glass cockpit.

However, at the end they pan straight down to the artificial horizon, but there's something that seems to cover the window, like they were filming from quite far back
2022-01-17_07-51-45.jpg
 
The crops of the video obscure the full picture somewhat, watch full frame of the video at the time the coloured lights appear you'll see some white lights on the left top corner and on the right side, they all move the same speed/direction.

Scrub the video back and forth at the 3 second mark.

Yellow is the other lights red is the airliner they are photographing, if the lights that are not from the plane are actually from an object then it takes up almost all of the field of view.

1642434635324.png
 
Reality check here... as the plane crosses the "lights," the planes flashing lights are echoed by flashes among the UFO lights. Further, it seems that the echoing flashes start at the top of the string if UFO lights, and move "down" the chain as the plane passes up and through it. Am I seeing more than is there, or does that seem accurate?

If so, it suggests to me some flaw on the windshield, a scratch or dimple or something, acting as a lens for the passing plane's lights during its passage. A possible sequence of events would be "crew person sees interesting reflection of cockpit lights from scratch on windshield, bored, shoots some video, gets lucky when a plane crosses through making thecshit more interesting, plane flashers make flashing lights along the scratch, videographer adds mention of V shaped craft to story despite no V shaped craft being shown, submits story and vid to MUFON." That's a bit speculative, admittedly, but I can't easily think of a scenario where the flight crew member sees the reflection in the windshield and is fooled fir long enough to shoot a video.

It may be significant that we are neither shown nor told how the incident ended.

Pilots among us, would it be usual to observe a v shaped unknown craft maneuvering in your airspace and NOT inform ATC? I hope not...
 
would it be usual to observe a v shaped unknown craft maneuvering in your airspace and NOT inform ATC?
esp because you know there is another plane nearby as you just filmed it. :)

"Hey Joe, did you see that giant V shaped ufo you just flew over?"
"I did Flight xox. are you gonna alert ATC?
"nah. you?"
"nah"
 
The EXIF data

Overall bit rate1 087 kb/s
Encoded dateUTC 2022-01-06 14:51:17
Tagged dateUTC 2022-01-06 14:51:29
Writing libraryApple QuickTime
com.apple.quicktime.location.accuracy.horizontal4.376470
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709+29.9925-090.2537+016.573/
com.apple.quicktime.makeApple
com.apple.quicktime.modeliPhone 13 Pro Max
com.apple.quicktime.software15.1.1
com.apple.quicktime.creationdate2022-01-02T21:33:23-0600
Content from External Source
The location is at the gate in New Orleans MSY, Concourse C.
2022-01-17_08-16-11.jpg
Creation Time 2022-01-02T21:33:23-0600, or 2022-01-03 03:33:55 UTC
 
If this were a solid object then surely it would either block out the lights of the passing aircraft (if the object was below / in front from the camera's POV) or get blocked out itself by the passing aircraft (if it was above / behind)?
 
2022-01-17_08-25-46.jpg

The GPS location is on the ground. This might be when they cropped and re-saved the video, or it might be the last GPS location the phone got if the was put away for takeoff.
Looking at the artificial horizon on the screen we see looks like they were not level.

1642437470981.png
 
That pitch angle looks normal for enroute cruise. The speed tape to the left also indicates normal cruise speed. Also on the navigation display on the left there are what appear to be weather radar returns.
 
So they were on the ground? Your table is not showing up so clearly @Mick West

Do you use one of the dark modes for the site? I use "Blackend" and indeed that table was in black on black (I have the same problem with a lot of material that Mendel quotes too, I presume it's an incomplete stylesheet definition). However, if you just select the text in the table it becomes visible.
 
My first impression was: "reflection from something inside". I checked a few HD cockpit videos of A320s doing night time flights, and sometimes lights can be seen that are clearly from inside.
I suspect this being the case, and the "anonymous" poster (sigh) must have known it very well. Hence also the relaxed discussion in the video (would you be relaxed seeing an alien craft in front of you going the same speed and heading?).
 
2022-01-17_08-25-46.jpg

The GPS location is on the ground. This might be when they cropped and re-saved the video, or it might be the last GPS location the phone got if the was put away for takeoff.

An AA A321 N185UW flight number AAL1776 Lands at MSY near that time and date and last position recorded is near that gate, flight path for that aircraft takes it over Georgia on its flight from Charlotte.
This seems like the regular Charlotte to MSY New Orleans shuttle

1642457403845.png
 
The crops of the video obscure the full picture somewhat, watch full frame of the video at the time the coloured lights appear you'll see some white lights on the left top corner and on the right side, they all move the same speed/direction.

Scrub the video back and forth at the 3 second mark.

Yellow is the other lights red is the airliner they are photographing, if the lights that are not from the plane are actually from an object then it takes up almost all of the field of view.

1642434635324.png
I guess they could be separate objects flying in formation and keeping pace with the lower airplane.
 
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That line of lights in the last one seems particularly relevant, looking up from somewhere close to the starboard seat.
yea, the colors are pretty stark in the not-a-ufo video, and i'm not a plane expert. i still think the pilot could have been faking it with another device like even a BrightLights app on his phone or a mini lite brite, a ghost detector :) etc.

i was just trying to show johne that his angle is way off and its too light outside in his pic.

lbm.pnggd.pngblapp.png
 
Interesting. The reflection of the two white lights appears (7:20) at the same time as a warning bell. The colored lights in the original video weren’t accompanied by a warning sound. I still think that the cockpit must be designed so that reflections from instrument indicator lights are kept to a minimum under normal conditions - especially in the windshield.
 
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An AA A321 N185UW flight number AAL1776 Lands at MSY near that time and date and last position recorded is near that gate, flight path for that aircraft takes it over Georgia on its flight from Charlotte.
This seems like the regular Charlotte to MSY New Orleans shuttle
The only aircraft I can find passing close to each other over Georgia at around the time of the sighting, and at the correct altitude are these - a Frontier A320 and an AA 737.

Edit - Although , this doent work as the A320 (from which the video was recorded) should be the lower aircraft. Hmm :(

1642496509847.png
 
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I
The only aircraft I can find passing close to each other over Georgia at around the time of the sighting, and at the correct altitude are these - a Frontier A320 and an AA 737.

1642496509847.png
Yeah the issue there is the A320 is higher than the 737, for the to match the MUFON report you would be looking for a A320 at 39000 with another aircraft flying overhead

If we look a the EXIF it shows some dates the com.apple.quicktime.creationdate is around

New Orleans (USA - Louisiana)Sunday, 2 January 2022, 21:30:00CSTUTC-6 hours
UTC (Time Zone)Monday, 3 January 2022, 03:30:00UTCUTC

The reported in MUFON date/time is give as 3 Jan 2022 0100 and the timezone is not given if it's local time then it was created before the reported siting

Overall bit rate1 087 kb/s
Encoded dateUTC 2022-01-06 14:51:17
Tagged dateUTC 2022-01-06 14:51:29
Writing libraryApple QuickTime
com.apple.quicktime.location.accuracy.horizontal4.376470
com.apple.quicktime.location.ISO6709+29.9925-090.2537+016.573/
com.apple.quicktime.makeApple
com.apple.quicktime.modeliPhone 13 Pro Max
com.apple.quicktime.software15.1.1
com.apple.quicktime.creationdate2022-01-02T21:33:23-0600
 
Reflections depend on angles. You're confusing "I don't see X" with "X doesn't exist". The woo-FO image contains zero crew, the above contains two. Are we to conclude that aliens make pilots disappear, using the same logic?

It all depends on the angles. And at night anything bright in the cockpit will probably be visible. Therefore most controls/lights are dimmed, but not dimmed enough to not cause a reflection.
 
This seems like a correlation...

1642515981884.png

Good job flarkey!
I think the similarities in the color is another nail in the coffin! Also the "fuzzy" nature of the UFO shows it could be this panel, indeed.
Looking at the angles of the screen and the person in the cockpit, for sure it matches!

EDIT
I am convinced the pilots/crew know/knew very well it is from inside. You see how honest pilots are? /s
 
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This seems like a correlation...

1642515981884.png
Seems unlikely those would be the only lights showing. They don't seem that different to the lights around them. The color match is great though. Or course the other light might be obscured by a clipboards or manual, or somesuch.
 
Stabilized version (starting 3 second in)



Very hard to make a case for anything other than reflected cockpit lights, which seems like a deliberate hoax.

Here's the most lights, deskewed somewhat and mirrored vertically for comparison with layouts.

2022-01-18_11-16-09.jpg
 
another video with a small cluster of lights visible in reflection

A one point an overhead light comes on, so you can see what the angles are - and also that you can only see a few lights, even though the whole cluster is visible (unlike what I said earlier)

2022-01-18_11-33-22.jpg
 
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Possibly there is some global setting that dims or turns off most of the lights and they were using it to look at the other aircraft and only critical lights remain (the non orange ones)

Here's a video from an airline pilot talking about dimming cockpit lighting, I've copied the url at a timestamp showing a dimmed cockpit at night.

Then the process of dimming other lights used prior to landing.


Source: https://youtu.be/ULCB1eI62kE?t=137

Here's the orange instrument lights being dimmed


Source: https://youtu.be/ULCB1eI62kE?t=175
 
I would like to illustrate the "panel like" nature of the reflections, otherwise I did nothing. :)

I took this crop from the original video at 0:07:
dfdfgd.png

Then applied some lines, accentuating the outlines.
retet.jpg
 
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