The Alderney UFO sighting

steviemac

Member
As a UFO sceptic for most of my life, this was the case years ago that finally enabled me to have a more open mind about what is actually flying through our skies. This is a well documented case of two huge cigar shaped objects witnessed by Capt Ray Bowyer and the passengers of his small plane in 2007.

Radar evidence backs up their sightings and as far as I'm aware this case has never been debunked, nor has any 'normal' explanation ever been considered viable or likely.

The objects were also recorded on Jersey Airport's primary, low-level radar system, used for air traffic control, which was screening out stationary objects. The decluttered radar traces showed two objects with slow movements during the period of the report.

This is a video reconstruction of the incident, however there is plenty of info online about it. Personally I believe what the Capt and his passengers saw...there was no reason to doubt multiple sightings. When you back that up with radar evidence, it becomes pretty compelling that something highly unusual was in the skies that day .

 
well from your link sources, David Clark the UFO guy says(below), so not sure why you are saying no "normal" explanation ever been considered likely.

Article:
DAVID CLARKE Sheffield Hallam University, UK e-mail: david.clark@shu.ac.uk. PAUL FULLER MARTIN SHOUGH National Aviation Reporting Centre on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP) e-mail: parcellular@btinternet.com Abstract—Unusual atmospheric phenomena (UAPs) were observed in daylight by multiple observers on board two civil aircraft in widely separated locations. We summarise results of an investigation based on radio communications reporting events in real time to Air Traffic Control (ATC), ATC radar and weather radar recordings, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) documents, witness interviews and statements, and other sources. We describe attempts to explain the phenomena with the help of expert specialist advisers and professional resources in the fields of meteorology, atmospheric optics, oceanography and geophysics. We are able to show that widespread media stories describing enormous phenomena up to a mile wide and detected by radar were based on speculation and misunderstandings. Many news reports were grossly exaggerated and inaccurate. However, we are unable to conclusively identify the UAPs observed. It proves possible to eliminate a number of theories with a fairly high level of confidence, leaving us with two types of phenomena—a rare atmospheric-optical effect or an earthquake precursor—both of which have the potential to explain at least some, although not all, features of the reports. We highlight certain features that appear to leave open the possibility of unusual physical processes


other clips from his investigation linked above

"His initial impression was that he could be seeing sunlight reflected from large vinery glasshouses on the Island of Guernsey, tens of miles away. He had often seen such an effect before, which would vanish in moments as the aircraft moved through the critical angle for reflection. But this light did not disappear"

"There was still a primary contact on the left of the Trislander, said Kelly [air traffic controller], now 10 o’clock at a range of 3 miles, but nothing that appeared to correspond to the visual UAP. Kelly thought the contacts might be false echoes caused by anomalous propagation.3"


"Both witnesses disputed Capt. Bowyer’s later public opinion (based on a revised impression of range) that the objects might have been thousands of feet across. Kate had no definite impression of size, but felt that they were ‘‘nothing like as large’’, the nearest seeming to be perhaps 10 miles away, between the plane and Alderney. John had the impression that the object he saw might have been smaller than the Channel merchant vessels they saw during the flight. In other words, their visual judgments at the time were not dissimilar to Capt. Bowyer’s"

"In summary, the radar evidence examined is not helpful in establishing the presence of unusual phenomena. An ATC radar echo reported below the approximate visually-estimated position of one UAP may have been associated with an identifiable moving surface vessel, which may also have been picked up on the low beam of the weather radar. At the same time there are factors—use of MTI and poor sample rate—which limit the usefulness of this negative result, and pending the results of the GEIPAN study the ATC data files have not yet been examined to a level of detail that would completely rule out the presence of interesting primary echoes."

"But we also noted the coincidence that the average LOS from the Trislander to the lights was not far from the sun azimuth, inviting a reflection theory. Some witness descriptions used phrases like ‘‘sunshine yellow’’ and ‘‘sunlight coloured’’, which were also suggestive. And if Patterson could not see anything at 1413UTC from above FL65 and reciprocal to the Trislander’s LOS, why not? A FlyBe 146 in a similar position a little later also reported no visual contact. An optical theory might explain these anomalies. An optical theory would also be consistent with the absence of unambiguous radar evidence"


etc etc
 
You will always get people, who weren't present, constantly dispute what experienced pilots have seen...it must be super annoying for every pilot who experiences that. I choose to believe Ray Bowyer, an experienced pilot of 18 years who had flown that short route thousands of times.

I can tell you clearly spent some time, searching for any scrap of information which would contradict the captains account. lol. The counter arguments you have chosen to present actually don't put much of a dent in his story at all. It's just the usual nit picking stuff.

Indeed it states ' In other words, their visual judgments at the time were not dissimilar to Capt. Bowyer’s" ie the witnesses did broadly agree with what he saw.

can I also mention that 'BBC Radio Guernsey reported that two visitors to Sark enquired at their hotel as to what two bright yellow objects in the sky might be. The objects were observed during an afternoon walk on the 23rd, in the direction of Alderney'

David Clarke did say in his investigations 'we are unable to conclusively identify the UAPs observed' also 'We highlight certain features that appear to leave open the possibility of unusual physical processes'.

Anyway the bottom line is no-one has ever been able to debunk this event. So its simply down to whether you keep an open mind (like I do) and have the ability to give pilots benefit of the doubt on many occasions ... or whether you are someone whose whole raison d'etre is to disbelieve what pilots see.
 
I choose to believe Ray Bowyer,
Article:
Even Capt Bower is
keeping an open mind
about what he saw off the
coast of AJderney.

"I'm certainly not say-
ing it was something of
another world. Ail I'm
saying is that I have never
seen anythinu like it in
all my yeare of flying."


I can tell you clearly spent some time, searching for any scrap of information which would contradict the captains account. lol.

no i clicked your wikipedia link. and the first source i checked was the clarke report.


1637772652373.png
 
Indeed it states ' In other words, their visual judgments at the time were not dissimilar to Capt. Bowyer’s" ie the witnesses did broadly agree with what he saw.

i have no doubt they all saw a sun reflection or something like that.

BBC Radio Guernsey reported that two visitors to Sark enquired at their hotel as to what two bright yellow objects in the sky might be. The objects were observed during an afternoon walk on the 23rd, in the direction of Alderney
you can, but if you provide a source i might believe you.

David Clarke did say in his investigations 'we are unable to conclusively identify the UAPs observed' also 'We highlight certain features that appear to leave open the possibility of unusual physical processes'.

yup.
 
or whether you are someone whose whole raison d'etre is to disbelieve what pilots see.
If you'll take some friendly advice, attacking the motives of the person who disagrees with you is not going to fly here. Much better to disprove information you think is in error.

But that does highlight the difficulties in trying to evaluate cases that hinge so strongly on what witnesses say they saw. Are they reporting accurately? That's why I am much more interested in the leaked videos like Go Fast or Gimbal than I am in the sighting by Fravor et al. You can do objective analysis of a video or other piece of physical evidence and figure out what was going on. With cases that so largely come down to what a witness or witnesses say, we're too often are left in a subjective fog, and too much boils down to subjective decisions like "Are pilots more accurate observers or just regular folks who know how to fly planes?"
 
i have no doubt they all saw a sun reflection or something like that
so....Capt Bowyer who had flown that short route thousands of times was confused by a simple sun reflection...and the passengers also just saw a sun reflection (that includes the passenger who actually pointed out the second object behind the first).

Captain Bowyer relates: "This [was] a big object in the sky, a very, very big object. I did not want to be too close to it and it was at that time that we had to descend to land. We descended through the 2,000-foot (610 m) haze layer and lost sight of it."

Come on...give the man credit, he's flown thousand of flights, he knows what a sun reflection is by now I'm sure. The sun reflection bothered him so much, he radioed Control tower for radar confirmation and became frightened?

re the report from two witnesses on the ground - (from https://archive.ph/20121224023636/h...ufo-incident&catid=47:2008-articles&Itemid=64

1637774305375.png
 
If you'll take some friendly advice, attacking the motives of the person who disagrees with you is not going to fly here. Much better to disprove information you think is in error.
ok, I understand. when I said 'you', I was was really referring to people, not to the individual poster.
 
It would seem possible to analyse the sun reflection idea by knowing where all the witnesses were and knowing where the sun was.

Can you provide us with this information please? (ie, times, locations, clickable map coordinates, etc)
 
If you'll take some friendly advice, attacking the motives of the person who disagrees with you is not going to fly here. Much better to disprove information you think is in error.

But that does highlight the difficulties in trying to evaluate cases that hinge so strongly on what witnesses say they saw. Are they reporting accurately? That's why I am much more interested in the leaked videos like Go Fast or Gimbal than I am in the sighting by Fravor et al. You can do objective analysis of a video or other piece of physical evidence and figure out what was going on. With cases that so largely come down to what a witness or witnesses say, we're too often are left in a subjective fog, and too much boils down to subjective decisions like "Are pilots more accurate observers or just regular folks who know how to fly planes?"
I guess you are also familiar with these studies, where it is shown that people report completely different things, while being subjected to the same scene.
That should indeed already mean that any witness report has a fair degree of uncertainty. The fact the witness claims "they know what they saw" is thus irrelevant.
 
It would seem possible to analyse the sun reflection idea by knowing where all the witnesses were and knowing where the sun was.

Can you provide us with this information please? (ie, times, locations, clickable map coordinates, etc)
It was seen by another pilot too from a different position. Maybe they both saw sun reflections that looked like physical objects?
All details you need should be here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Alderney_UFO_sighting
 
.Capt Bowyer who had flown that short route thousands of times was confused by a simple sun reflection
i got confused by this strip of yellow light outside the window ive been looking out of for 10 years now. my first thought was christmas lights, but it is some distance and that would have been a heck of alot of lights. anyway, put my glasses on and it was just the sun setting and a fluke of clouds and timing. i had never seen anything like that before.
 
i got confused by this strip of yellow light outside the window ive been looking out of for 10 years now. my first thought was christmas lights, but it is some distance and that would have been a heck of alot of lights. anyway, put my glasses on and it was just the sun setting and a fluke of clouds and timing. i had never seen anything like that before.
sorry, what's this from?
 
it's from me.
lol. ok. Capt Bowyer even used his binoculars to see the object and took off his glasses and put them back on, trying various methods to confirm it was actually real. They viewed it for almost 15 minutes...if it was a sudden sun reflection, you wouldn't spend 15 long minutes being fooled , lets be real.
 
Last edited:
Pilots think they saw many things, the one below is just the first reference I found. A little more digging and you'll find there were pilots who actually shot at Venus (or maybe it was Jupiter, I don't remember. In Iran or Iraq iirc.)


https://edition.cnn.com/2012/04/17/travel/canada-disoriented-pilot/index.html
We know on occasions that people (and pilots) see things that aren't actually there. But that doesn't follow that every single sighting by pilots in the last 50 years, is down to pure delusion. However judging by some sceptics, every pilot who has ever reported a significant UAP is always delusional. ;)
 
From wikipedia...

Jersey ATC was now able to get confirmation from the pilot of Blue Island Air, 336  who, from 25 miles (40 km) to the south, also had visual contact with one object.
i cant find that in the wiki page. can you quote it please. or screenshot
 
We know on occasions that people (and pilots) see things that aren't actually there. But that doesn't follow that every single sighting by pilots in the last 50 years, is down to pure delusion. However judging by some sceptics, every pilot who has ever reported a significant UAP is always delusional. ;)
You are very much reason, it does not follow. It just makes it extremely improbable that any report like that is actually of something extraordinary. That's the rational baseline where skeptics start from.
 
We know on occasions that people (and pilots) see things that aren't actually there. But that doesn't follow that every single sighting by pilots in the last 50 years, is down to pure delusion. However judging by some sceptics, every pilot who has ever reported a significant UAP is always delusional. ;)
It just shows (to me at least), that reports by pilots have an uncertainty, but we don't know the magnitude.
 

Can you post them in this thread here please?

One of the ways metabunk works is that people post the evidence, sources, primary sources, and references, etc in the threads themselves, so that other people don't have to go digging around for them.

It takes a little while to get used to - to be frank, it's a lot more rigorous and grown-up than most other places online - but it works well and keeps things neat.

Posting Guidelines and Link Policy above (under "Info") describe it all quite nicely.

Cheers. :)
 
anyway lets wrap it up, because we could debate it all night

Was the pilot experienced and credible? Very much so
Were there other witnesses to the objects? Yes both in the plane and on the ground.
Was it noticed by any other pilot? Yes
Was anything unusual/relevant picked up on radar: Yes

That's a lot of ticks in my book...which leads me to believe that the pilot and his passengers did in fact see highly unusual craft in the air that day....perhaps 'otherworldly'

You are fully entitled to believe the pilot, passengers, the pilot of the other plane and the tourists who spotted two yellow objects are all delusional. That is the default position taken anyway by all sceptics and nothing I could say would ever change the minds of sceptics.

I actually have an open mind on UFO's, I'm not a tinfoil hat UFO nutter, however there are a few very compelling cases which make me think perhaps there is something visiting our airspace. I like my 'on the fence' position actually :)
 
Was the pilot experienced and credible? Very much so
Were there other witnesses to the objects? Yes both in the plane and on the ground.
Was it noticed by any other pilot? Yes
Was anything unusual/relevant picked up on radar: Yes

was the pilot experienced? yes.
were there other witnesses to the anomaly? yes
did any other witness describe the anomaly as an object? no.
did witnesses give different accounts on estimated distance and size? yes
did Capt Bower change his stated observation at anytime? yes.
was anything that could maybe be connected to the sighting picked up on radar? yes.
was anything "unusual" picked up on radar? unknown (but probably not)



Not trying to discourage you from believing. UFOs are fun. i prefer earth bound cryptoids myself, but to each his own.

But for both UFOs (and earthbound cryptoids), i'm personally going to need alot more than 1 pilot coming to convince himself it was ETs especially when noone in his party seems to be backing up his hypothesis.
 
I actually have an open mind on UFO's, I'm not a tinfoil hat UFO nutter, however there are a few very compelling cases which make me think perhaps there is something visiting our airspace. I like my 'on the fence' position actually :)

Keeping an open mind is always a good thing and that's not a given even here on Metabunk. I'm 'on the fence' too, but then, as @flarkey said, it's a matter of having good (extraordinarily good, in the case of UFOs) evidence.
 
Can you post them in this thread here please?

One of the ways metabunk works is that people post the evidence, sources, primary sources, and references, etc in the threads themselves, so that other people don't have to go digging around for them.

It takes a little while to get used to - to be frank, it's a lot more rigorous and grown-up than most other places online - but it works well and keeps things neat.

Posting Guidelines and Link Policy above (under "Info") describe it all quite nicely.

Cheers. :)


keeping an open mind also means being open to the possibility there is an earthly explanation. :)
Oh absolutely, I know that the vast majority of 'UFO' sightings are generally poor and easily discredited. I'm open minded to all explanations. However I also think a few cases do have merit. However if we flip your question, does that mean you have an open mind too on both possible explanations (earthly or ET), or is it just me who should entertain both? ;)
 
Oh absolutely, I know that the vast majority of 'UFO' sightings are generally poor and easily discredited. I'm open minded to all explanations. However I also think a few cases do have merit. However if we flip your question, does that mean you have an open mind too on both possible explanations (earthly or ET), or is it just me who should entertain both? ;)
Sorry if I intervene in an answer to @deirdre. Sure I keep an open mind, I would be delighted to discover aliens are there, easy space travel is possible and a bright future awaits for us among the stars. Just I never saw any evidence this is true, only much evidence it doesn't.
 
Last edited:
You are fully entitled to believe [everyone] who spotted two yellow objects are all delusional. That is the default position taken anyway by all sceptics

Not all skeptics take that as the default position - in fact, probably a minority of them think that.

Though if you really believe it's true please provide evidence (skeptics' joke there).

I guess on this one there's not really very much to talk about. Some people saw something 14 years ago but there are no photos, no documented evidence that anyone could examine.

Various theories for a mundane explanation can be proposed but they can't be proven one way or the other.

Various theories for something extraordinary can be proposed as well, but the same goes for them.

Could be aliens, could be something totally normal. Who knows? 1637782945199.png
 
Last edited:
However if we flip your question, does that mean you have an open mind too on both possible explanations (earthly or ET), or is it just me who should entertain both? ;)
well i can't understand why everyone thinks ETs instead of angels in the few cases that do suggest a real "otherworldly" event, but that aside... yes open minded means open minded to all things. but what's that saying?.. you dont want to be SO open minded your brains fall out. :)

(note: this thread this is not one of the "your brain fell out cases", sounds like a legit rare atmospheric type phenomenon and it sounds pretty cool to try to figure out. That's why ROry is asking you for specific details.)
@Rory Dave CLarks report linked above (my second post i think) has specifics.
 
There was still a primary contact on the left of the Trislander, said Kelly [air traffic controller], now 10 o’clock at a range of 3 miles, but nothing that appeared to correspond to the visual UAP.
That seems to indicate that the radar data does not confirm the sighting.

Captain Bowyer relates: "This [was] a big object in the sky, a very, very big object. I did not want to be too close to it and it was at that time that we had to descend to land. We descended through the 2,000-foot (610 m) haze layer and lost sight of it."
'We could have investigated this further but chose not to' - probably didn't think it was that interesting after all? Like the smartphone clip that ends to soon, a common trope in UFO sightings.

My bet is on unusual weather creating mirage-like reflections.
In the olden times, people would've called it ball lightning and left it at that.
 
That seems to indicate that the radar data does not confirm the sighting.


'We could have investigated this further but chose not to' - probably didn't think it was that interesting after all? Like the smartphone clip that ends to soon, a common trope in UFO sightings.

My bet is on unusual weather creating mirage-like reflections.
In the olden times, people would've called it ball lightning and left it at that.
yeah in the olden times, they didn't have radar. The pilot and crew observed the objects for 15 solid minutes, tricky to mistake that for ball lightening. Anyway, maybe it's swamp gas.
 
As a UFO sceptic for most of my life, this was the case years ago that finally enabled me to have a more open mind about what is actually flying through our skies. This is a well documented case of two huge cigar shaped objects witnessed by Capt Ray Bowyer and the passengers of his small plane in 2007.

Radar evidence backs up their sightings and as far as I'm aware this case has never been debunked, nor has any 'normal' explanation ever been considered viable or likely.

The objects were also recorded on Jersey Airport's primary, low-level radar system, used for air traffic control, which was screening out stationary objects. The decluttered radar traces showed two objects with slow movements during the period of the report.

This is a video reconstruction of the incident, however there is plenty of info online about it. Personally I believe what the Capt and his passengers saw...there was no reason to doubt multiple sightings. When you back that up with radar evidence, it becomes pretty compelling that something highly unusual was in the skies that day .



I have long suspected that this 'UFO' was actually a cross channel ferry reflecting the sunlight at a certain angle....and that the 'darker' region in the alleged disk of the UFO was simply where the letters 'P&O' ( or whatever ferry operator ) are painted on the side of the ship ( in blue in the case of P&O) about the same distance from the end of the UFO as the logo is from the end of a ferry. The sun would reflect more off the white paint of the ferry than the dark paint of the logo....giving the impression of a darker segment to the 'UFO'. In fact....the very fact that the logo is proportionally in the same place that the dark segment of the 'UFO' is located is precisely what makes me think channel ferry is the best explanation.

A channel ferry is a sizeable object....600-700 feet long, and is probably one of the few things that could be confused as 'a mile wide' if true distance was not known.

Question is...are there cross channel ferry logs from the time.
 
Last edited:
A channel ferry is a sizeable object....600-700 feet long, and is probably one of the few things that could be confused as 'a mile wide' if true distance was not known.

Question is...are there cross channel ferry logs from the time.
Another useful data point would be about the radar and the weather. There are weather conditions where radar gets reflected or refracted back to the ground, such that a ferry boat might show up on an airport radar.
 
Back
Top