11 February 2024 , 21:05
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One of the UK's busiest airports has become a UFO hotspot following several near misses with passenger jets.
A UFO expert has called for the Government to investigate after a string of sights at London Stansted Airport. In one a mystery black craft came within 20 metres of a Ryanair plane travelling at 230mph shortly after it took off. It was one of 27 reported UFO sightings in Essex in the past six years alone. A drone-monitoring system is in place to try and detect such craft, but it did not register, the Daily Star reported.
"The pilot saw an object which they describe as black' which passed within 20 metres of the aircraft. The plane was travelling at 230mph and the object was travelling from north to south," a report into the incident read.
There have been several near misses close to the airport (file photo) (Getty Images/Image Source)Other UFO reports include sightings of a "green fluorescent light like a comet coming from the sky" and a "big faded ball of light going in and out of the clouds". In another incident close to Stansted – which serves 27 million passengers annually – multiple pilots reported their collision avoidance systems were detecting an object 500ft beneath their aircraft as they came in to land.
An Essex Police report, obtained under the Freedom Of Information Act, said: "Three aircraft reported an object was in their vicinity. Informant from tower reporting that two planes have reported an object at about 500ft below them as they are coming into land on Runway 22, the closest being 20km away.
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"Approach (two-three miles out) when their TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) alerted them to something at around 500ft. None of the pilots could see anything when they looked."
Nick Pope, who used to run the Ministry Of Defence's UFO investigation unit, said the incidents were "fascinating" and called for the UK Government to take such sightings as seriously as their counterparts in the US, who are probing more than 800 close encounters with military personnel. These fascinating revelations illustrate that whatever one thinks about UFOs there's a credible and serious flight safety issue involved," said Nick.
"When an object passes within 20 metres of an aircraft this is a very close call by anyone's definition. This, and the other incidents revealed in this FOI response, shows that it was a mistake for the MoD to terminate their UFO investigation programme at the end of 2009 and suggests it's time to reverse this policy."
Last year the Mirror reported how there had been a total of nine reported UFO sightings in Leeds in just two-and-a-half-years, and not even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration could figure out what they are.
A published report from the space agency looked into hundreds of UAPs, more commonly referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena. NASA administrator Bill Nelson has since revealed their conclusions, and the space organisation admits they simply do not know what is in the skies of Leeds.
In September the Mirror published an interactive map showing the location of UFO sightings in the UK.