TicTac seen from Airliner near Area 51 (Reddit)

flarkey

flarkey

Senior Member.
Staff member
Hi,

This thread was getting some traction on Reddit and Twitter. I started looking into it and bumped in @jarlrmai who helped out in tracking down the airliner and geolacting the video.

Was flying over Nevada, near Nellis airforce base. I noticed this object outside the window, it was a little closer before I started filming and visibly NO wings or tail. it seemed to also be a little "fat" (scientific term) to be a plane. I showed this to multiple airline crew members including the pilot and they stated that it was definitely not a plane. To be sure, I filmed planes at roughly the same distance and you could clearly see wings and were much thinner. I tried stabilizing the video as much as I could. I noticed it had a distinct "tictac" shape to it so I got a little excited.
Click to expand...



Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/15wit3i/caught_this_tic_tac_looking_object_near_nellis/

The thread poster - Chris Ramsay - is a TV host and YouTuber who has an interest in weird things, particularly UFOs:

https://www.youtube.com/user/MrTricksforfun

I think we've solved it anyway. Maybe @Mick West coudl plug in the KML files into Sitrec if he's bored!



Source: https://twitter.com/flarkey/status/1693379840508826048?s=20
 
Last edited:
deirdre said:
so i have to click your twitter links to see the solve?
The tic tac is "this" (whatever "this" is) Fly Frontier A320? or the plane the camera is in is FLy Frontier A320?
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I will add some more detail tomorrow, the problem is it's bedtime on a Sunday here for us both so we're trying to get a headstart on it but have work tomorrow.
 
deirdre said:
so i have to click your twitter links to see the solve?
The tic tac is "this" (whatever "this" is) Fly Frontier A320? or the plane the camera is in is FLy Frontier A320?
Click to expand...
I dont think you have to click them, they should be embedded in the thread posts. But you might have a link blocker or something on your browser that stops the media appearing. But I take your point, I should have added more detail to the debunk.


Also, - yes, the tictac is the Frontier Arlines A320 - the cyan plane heading northwest in the image below.

The OP was on Air Canada 777 (ACA 777 - the magenta plane heading south west)
1692570768155.png


Putting the flights into Google Earth we can match the terrain seen in the video to the location.
1692570850919.png


This confirms that the tictac was plane registration N235FR - an A320 with a white fuselage and blue tail that makes it look like a tictac.
1692570923217.png
 
I made this video before I saw that this thread already existed but I thought I'd post it here just to pat myself on the back anyway.
 

Attachments

  • untitled.mp4
    5.1 MB
flarkey said:
I dont think you have to click them, they should be embedded in the thread posts. But you might have a link blocker or something on your browser that stops the media appearing. But I take your point, I should have added more detail to the debunk.
Click to expand...
Twitter have again been dicking around with access rights to their API recently (just this last week), so it could be that. The method I always used to access twitter, "nitter", has completely stopped working now (there's a flurry of reports of all mirrors being down from 6 days ago here: https://updownradar.com/status/nitter.net ), so I have no access to anything hosted on twitter any more. Embedding never was taking a copy of, anyway, they always could have rug-pulled on a whim, we shouldn't be surprised that this kind of thing has happenned.
 
//note I have edited this post to correct some things as mentioned below, mostly timezone things.

This has 11k upvotes now I guess that's the power of social media stars.

Anyway here's the location verification with some clearer indication of the matching terrain, the pattern of most of the farmed fields has changed since the Google image was taken but the pattern of the lighter patches is identical.

The reason this was key is that the OP listed the time as "5:18PM" but gave no indication of timezone, given the plane took off on the other side of North America (Montreal Canada) and the flight was 5 or so hours and the plane landed before 5:18PM in local LA PDT time it was clearly some other x:18 time. Sometimes the timezone of the photo taken on a plane is still in the timezone of the take off area , but that didn't seem to match here. So it was unclear which timezone the 5:18PM time was.

Getting the full EXIF from the file would give us the UTC time, we didn't have that here and it seemed unlikely we'd get it easily/quickly.

So basically I tracked the plane backwards from landing to each x:18 hour in Google Earth and looked at the terrain on the rear right of the plane for features that matched to work out the actual spot the photo was taken (and thus the time)

Turns out the timezone was EDT MDT which is 17:18 in the time zone the photo was taken in and 23:18 UTC, so the phone was receiving updates, but with photos from aircraft this is not always the case as the "airplane mode" often stops time updates.

Also the OP gave the location as near Nellis AFB which was 85 miles away from the actual spot, which made finding the plane a case of finding it on take off and tracking it across America.

1692607430635.png

1692607448622.png
 
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jarlrmai said:
The reason this was key is that the OP listed the time as "5:18PM" but gave no indication of timezone, given the plane took off on the other side of North America (Montreal Canada) and the flight was 5 or so hours and the plane landed before 5:18PM in local LA PDT time it was clearly some other x:18 time. Sometimes the timezone of the photo taken on a plane is still in the timezone of the take off area , but that didn't seem to match here. So it was unclear which timezone the 5:18PM time was. [...]
Turns out the timezone was EDT which is 17:18 in the time zone the photo was taken in and 11:18 UTC, so the phone was receiving updates, but with photos from aircraft this is not always the case as the "airplane mode" stops time updates.
Click to expand...
Not to slight your sleuthing, but Montreal is on EDT.
 
jarlrmai said:
The reason this was key is that the OP listed the time as "5:18PM" but gave no indication of timezone, given the plane took off on the other side of North America (Montreal Canada) and the flight was 5 or so hours and the plane landed before 5:18PM in local LA PDT time it was clearly some other x:18 time. Sometimes the timezone of the photo taken on a plane is still in the timezone of the take off area , but that didn't seem to match here. So it was unclear which timezone the 5:18PM time was.
Click to expand...
The original poster said the time was "5:18PM" and near Nellis Air Force Base (Las Vegas), so I just took the time xx.18pm when it was closest to Las Vegas , which was 23:18UTC.
 
I think Chris Ramsay is Canadian.

He is known for his Card magic which is why I use to watch his videos. I learnt card magic during the pandemic lockdowns. And he is a pretty decent card magician and had some tutorials on card magic tricks

He seems to have started a new YT channel now looking at UFOs etc.
 
flarkey said:
The original poster said the time was "5:18PM" and near Nellis Air Force Base (Las Vegas), so I just took the time xx.18pm when it was closest to Las Vegas , which was 23:18UTC.
Click to expand...
I guess that works as well, but when I looked over Nellis and the flight was not in my map area I had to discount that location and work from 1st principles.
 
jarlrmai said:
Turns out the timezone was [MDT] which is 17:18 in the time zone the photo was taken in and 23:18 UTC, so the phone was receiving updates, but with photos from aircraft this is not always the case as the "airplane mode" stops time updates.
Click to expand...
Modern phones use GPS to find their time zone, and this works in airplane mode.

Android:
Article:
Location time zone detection, available on Android 12 or higher, is an optional automatic time zone detection feature that allows devices to use their location and time zone map data to determine the time zone.

iOS does this by default, and since iOS 8.3 does not turn off GPS in airplane mode.
 
Mendel said:
Modern phones use GPS to find their time zone, and this works in airplane mode.

Android:
Article:
Location time zone detection, available on Android 12 or higher, is an optional automatic time zone detection feature that allows devices to use their location and time zone map data to determine the time zone.

iOS does this by default, and since iOS 8.3 does not turn off GPS in airplane mode.
Click to expand...
Yeah that's interesting seems that lot do update time from GPS rather than network now but we can't always rely on it being accurate from phone footage.
 
jackfrostvc said:
I think Chris Ramsay is Canadian.

He is known for his Card magic which is why I use to watch his videos. I learnt card magic during the pandemic lockdowns. And he is a pretty decent card magician and had some tutorials on card magic tricks

He seems to have started a new YT channel now looking at UFOs etc.
Click to expand...
Guessing this was the PR push then? No mention of it on the channel though.
 
I guess claims- particularly claims with apparent evidence- should all be taken on their own merits, regardless of who the claimant is (unless there's very good reason to do otherwise).

But an illusionist, who (presumably) benefits from a YouTube following- must admit I'm a little sceptical from the outset.
I mean, if David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear, on film... ;)
Interesting bit of film, though...

Do we know if Mr Ramsay brought the UFO to the attention of cabin crew, or fellow passengers?
 
John J. said:
I guess claims- particularly claims with apparent evidence- should all be taken on their own merits, regardless of who the claimant is (unless there's very good reason to do otherwise).

But an illusionist, who (presumably) benefits from a YouTube following- must admit I'm a little sceptical from the outset.
I mean, if David Copperfield can make the Statue of Liberty disappear, on film... ;)
Interesting bit of film, though...

Do we know if Mr Ramsay brought the UFO to the attention of cabin crew, or fellow passengers?
Click to expand...
Yes, his comment in that reddit thread says he showed a number of crew members and the pilot. And supposedly they said it was not a plane. But then what do you expect. if what he showed was the video, it doesnt look like a plane.
 
John J. said:
Do we know if Mr Ramsay brought the UFO to the attention of cabin crew, or fellow passengers
Click to expand...

jackfrostvc said:
Yes, his comment in that reddit thread says he showed a number of crew members and the pilot.
Click to expand...
Then respectfully to all concerned, no we don't know if he called it to the attention of others. We only know he SAYS he did. Have any of them confirmed he pointed it out to them?

(I am absolutely not saying that he didn't, but corroboration is always important.)
 
jackfrostvc said:
Yes, his comment in that reddit thread says he showed a number of crew members and the pilot. And supposedly they said it was not a plane.
Click to expand...
Hearsay.
It doesn't come close to the pilot saying she saw it, didn't see it on the TCAS display, and asked ATC for identification.
The crew might just have been humoring a weird passenger to avoid a scene. We don't know because we can't ask them.
 
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