The pilot that visually confirmed reports of an unidentified flying object in the skies over Arizona for air traffic controllers last month has been identified as Blenus Green, an accomplished aviator and retired Air Force B-1B Lancer pilot, and according to him, it wasn’t an airplane.
At right around 3:30 p.m. on February 24th, a Learjet pilot flying at around 37,000 feet reported seeing “something” pass overhead to Albuquerque based air traffic controllers. With no sign of the strange craft on radar, air traffic control sought to confirm the report with other aircraft flying in the vicinity.
“American 1095, uh, let me know if, uh, you anything pass over you here in the next, uh, 15 miles,” the air traffic controller said.
“It’s American 1095. Yeah, something just passed over us,” Green replied moments later. “I don’t know what it was, but at least two-three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us.”
“It was just really beaming light or could have had a big reflection and was several thousand feet above us going opposite direction.”
The recorded interaction between pilots and air traffic controllers, first released to The Warzone, has since been the subject of quite a bit of speculation, as experts and enthusiasts alike attempt to make sense of the unidentified object spotted by more than one seasoned pilot. Explanations ranging from weather balloons to alien spaceships have been floated, but even Green, who saw the strange craft for himself, doesn’t quite know what to make of it.
Green, who was once tasked with piloting America’s heavy payload, supersonic Lancer bomber that has made headlines in recent months as one of the primary aircraft employed in America’s show of force exercises on the Korean peninsula, only knows one thing for sure: it didn’t look like any airplane he’s ever seen.
Albuquerque Center asked us if we could look and just be on the lookout and see if we see anything, and I’m like ‘okay’.” Green said in an interview with local TV affiliate KRBC.
“So, sure enough, I was looking out the windscreen because I wanted to see if it was there and yeah, I did. I saw it. It was very bright, but it wasn’t so bright you couldn’t look at it. You almost really wanted to look at it, to try to figure out what it was. It didn’t look anything like an airplane.”
Green, who has over twenty years experience in the cockpit of civilian and military aircraft claimed that he had never seen anything like the craft that flew overhead.
What was weird about it, normally, if you have an object and the sun is shining this way, the reflection would be on this side, but this was bright all the way around. It was so bright that you really couldn’t make out what shape it was,” he explained.
“I wasn’t scared at all, I was just really fascinated by it. Just trying to figure out what it was because it was so out of the ordinary.”
The pilot of the Learjet that first reported the incident to air traffic controllers has not yet been identified, but Bob Tracey, vice president of Phoenix Air Group, Inc. that chartered the flight and received a debriefing from the pilot, claims the pilot also reported that the strange craft was extremely bright.
Like you woke up in the morning and stared at a bright light,” Tracey said. “He said that it passed him at maybe a similar speed that an airliner would.”
That speed could potentially eliminate theories that that what the pilots saw was a high altitude weather balloon, as it would be limited to achieving wind speeds, which rarely reach that velocity even at that altitude.
Image courtesy of Pixabay
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Those are good ideas. I don't know if he has any hobbies, but there are a couple of groups in the greater neighborhood area that I could suggest to him, one is a golf and one is cards. Thanks, Joni
Ahh, I'm sorry for your neighbor. I have seen this so many times when the wife passes before the husband and the husband has a harder time carrying on after the fact. Loosing a spouse is one of the most devastating things you can go through. I've seen people become bitter (especially those who had a spouse who suffered long illness) and those that just drop out of society and those that move forward. Grief is an odd duck and we all react differently to it as you well know. I think taking him the deviled eggs was a great idea. It's a shame that his children don't visit as frequently. They probably don't recognize the depression their Dad is experiencing. Perhaps your kids can help fill some of the gap just by visiting. Do you know anything he likes to do as a hobby? Maybe get the grandkids to ask some questions. It will be less obvious if it's coming from them. Sometimes you just have to show people there is still life out there and it's worth living it. I'll put more in a PM. You're a good soul, Pat.
Yes, we can all laugh about the thermal inversion, because he laughs about it himself and wasn't hurt. But Joni, my neighbor is a sad case. His wife died last year of liver cancer, she was only 55. He's older and was retired, has two grown kids, but they don't visit and bring the little grandchildren as much as they did when their mom was alive. He's obviously lonely, and he's drinking too much. He got a job at Food Lion, but they cut his hours to one day a week. Honestly, it's like watching an accident getting ready to happen. Angie and I made him some deviled eggs at Easter, seems silly, but it's one of those things where you just don't know what to do, so you make some deviled eggs :) Next time the kids do visit him, I'm going to try to talk to one of them, and at least get their phone numbers so I can call if he needs help. Let me know if you can think of anything else that might help. Sorry, should have put this in a PM. Hugs!
LMAO!!! Pat you are so funny. Words can have multiple meanings. I like your definition of thermal inversion, too. It definitely brings a visual to mind.
Oh hell no! Mr. Google's obviously got nothing on you! And it's actually a feasible explanation for the very bright shining quality of that UFO sighting. Thanks! (only now that I know the real definition, I'll have to stop using "thermal inversion" to describe what happened back in December when my inebriated neighbor walked off his porch and fell head first into the snow!)