1994: An Airline Pilot And Others Watch A Domed Disk

THINK ABOUTIT SIGHTING REPORT

Date: May 6, 1994

Sighting Time: 0330 (330 AM)- 0415 (415 AM)

Day/Night: Night

Location: Guaratinguetá, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Urban or Rural: Rural

Hynek Classification: CE-I (Close Encounter I) Observation of an object in close proximity to the witness (i.e. within 500’)

Duration: 45 mins

No. of Object(s):  3

Size of Object(s):

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): Domed disk.

Color of Object(s): bright red light

Number of Witnesses: 4

Source: Brian Vike, HBCCUFO Research (hbccufo.org)  Original Source

Summary/Description: I am an airline pilot (now retired) and I am also a qualified meteorologist and air traffic controller. I consider myself a very good aircraft observer. A group of us were returning from flight simulator training in Rio de Janeiro on the road to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We departed Rio late at night and drove along the main highway and at about 3:15 I was sleeping in the rear of the car which was travelling at high speed. The car was being driven by a local chauffeur and inside it was me, an airline captain at the time, an older flight engineer from the U.S. and my girlfriend who was a flight attendant and a pilot also. I was awaken by my girlfriend who pointed out a light in the sky which had been following us for a while, according to her. It was a bright red light in the sky and my first impression was that it was a radio antenna obstacle light high on a mountain. 

Full Report

I am an airline pilot (now retired) and I am also a qualified meteorologist and air traffic controller. I consider myself a very good aircraft observer. A group of us were returning from flight simulator training in Rio de Janeiro on the road to Sao Paulo, Brazil. We departed Rio late at night and drove along the main highway and at about 3:15 I was sleeping in the rear of the car which was travelling at high speed. The car was being driven by a local chauffeur and inside it was me, an airline captain at the time, an older flight engineer from the U.S. and my girlfriend who was a flight attendant and a pilot also. I was awaken by my girlfriend who pointed out a light in the sky which had been following us for a while, according to her. It was a bright red light in the sky and my first impression was that it was a radio antenna obstacle light high on a mountain.

However we were travelling fast on a flat area and there were no mountains around and the light was keeping up with us. The light was moving erratically in a side ways and up and down motion but keeping it’s relative position to us, impossible for a stationary object. I thought of a helicopter, but there were no position lights or strobe visible and the light was moving in a very odd way for a helicopter. The lights started to change from red to yellow to white, green and even blue. This continued for at least five minutes and we slowed down from 80-90 miles per hour to 40 and the light kept it’s relative position to us. Traffic on the highway was light, but we reached a point where there was a bus, two or three trucks and several cars parked on the side of the road and people were outside of their vehicles watching the object in the sky.

It was a clear but dark a night with no moon, there was a cloud cover but it was high probably over 10,000 feet and apparently the object was initially flying at 3-4000 feet and a mile away from us. I asked the driver to pull to the side of the road and I came out of the car, followed by my girlfriend. The object was now much lower and closer and was hovering to the south side of the highway.

I could not hear any sound and the lights were now dimmed but still changing colors and I could see the shape of the object to be the familiar dome shaped object. I walked two hundred feet on the side of the road towards the object which was hovering low, no sound came from it and the night was absolutely still except for an occasional vehicle passing down the road. There were several vehicles stopped on the side of the road further down and I walked back to the car to get a camera. I opened the trunk to get the camera but we had taken many pictures in Rio and we had no film left. My girlfriend joined me and we walked back towards the object which was floating three or four hundred feet away from us, dimly lit now and probably at two hundred feet above the ground.

Suddenly, there was a few flashes of multicolor lights from the top of the object and a faint bluish-greenish glow showed from the bottom part and the object started to float away quietly towards the south gaining altitude slowly at first and then increasingly fast. When the object started to move I felt some vibration and heard a faint low pitch humming sound. After another multicolor light display the object climbed straight up very fast and still silently. It changed direction several times in a series of sharp, right angle turns and then disappeared. While I was close to the object there was a faint smell of ionization, not unlike that smell present in high power radio station transmitting rooms, when they used vacuum tubes. There was also a taste of metal in my mouth.

The cars and trucks started leaving and we climbed in the car and drove on until we reached a truck stop restaurant further down the road were several other witnesses who had stopped for coffee. Our driver, who had stayed inside the car told me that there was a lot of static in the car’s radio while the object was nearby. The people at the restaurant told us that sightings are common in that area. I also remembered that in 1972 I was flying near the same area one night and an airliner ahead of my airplane reported a UFO. I did not see the object myself but listened to the radio conversation between the airliner, the air traffic controllers and other airplanes on the area.

There was a U.S. military aircraft in the area that night in 1972 and after landing I talked to the crew which had seen the object. The subject never came up again after that night. In 30 years of flying and being a control tower operator for some time, I heard many UFO stories but had never actually seen one until that night in Brazil in 1994. Upon my return to the U.S. some weeks later, I reported this sighting to every possible government agency and filed several reports but never received any reply.