An image used by Air Midwest on social media to represent the sighting. (Image credit: Air Midwest / Facebook) — An image used by Air Midwest on social media to represent the sighting. *(Image credit: Air Midwest / Facebook)*

Air Midwest—a flight training and aviation service company—recently released information detailing a series of strange lights spotted by two of their aircraft south of Gloucester, England on February 14th between 8:15-8:45 p.m.

According to a statement made by Air Midwest, two of the company's aircraft were conducting nighttime navigation exercises to the south and southeast of their home airfield when the encounter occurred.

Around 8:15 p.m, one of the aircraft was tracking south towards Gloucester at 7,000 feet after leaving the Birmingham air traffic zone. Meanwhile, a second aircraft was also tracking south towards Gloucester at 4,000 feet.

Both aircraft observed two lights—one red and one orange—in the sky south of Gloucester. The aircraft approached the lights on an interception track, but were unable to gain on the objects as they appeared to move further south of Gloucester as the aircraft approached.

The pilots and air traffic control were unable to identify the lights.

One of the pilot’s reports was included with the statement.

I observed initially 2 large square orange lights. One on top of each but slightly off set however there was a gap in height between them.
The top object was constantly orange. The lower one occasionally flicked white but majority of time was orange. In addition to that on 2 occasions I observed 5 orange lights but that was momentary.
I initially observed them when leaving Birmingham control zone. I thought they were just south of Gloucester and definitely a lot higher then us. We then climbed 5000 ft and they seemed level at that height and stationary.
As we approached Gloucester came apparent they were now further south maybe beyond Bristol even as far as Weston super-mare but directly south of Gloucester airport.
On our return leg up to EGBO (our home base) by Worcester we climbed 7000 ft and commenced a turn to observe the lights. At this point they seemed lower than us in the same place and stationary.
I have no idea what these objects were.

Air Midwest also released two radio transmissions related to the sightings.

"This first one is the pilot of callsign ‘Golf-Sierra India’ calling air traffic control our our home airfield," a statement included with the recording said. "In this radio call the pilot believes he may be under a laser attack from the ground. We are unsure if this event is involved with the main event. In this case a bright laser-like light illuminated the cockpit. Immediately after this the main lights were observed that we refer to in the post."

"This second recording is between two pilots of callsign ‘Golf-Sierra India’ and ‘Golf- Alpha Mike’. The response of ‘Alpha Mikes’ captain is humorous as at the time he believes the light must be a normal event," said a statement accompanying the second recording.

The company later clarified their previous statement by insisting they had never claimed to have "encountered an extraterrestrial situation."

"We encountered unexplained airborne lights that defied our normal expectation of standard aircraft or meteorological activity," said the second statement. "We considered it could be night glow hot air balloons, but we are not aware any any such activities taking place and the objects observed seemed to move from their original location to another with a rapidity not in line with balloon activity...but of course the apparent changes of location could have been an optical illusion due to night effect."

"In conclusion, our pilots, both senior flight instructors and highly experienced commercial airline pilots with over 25,000 flying hours between them, together with their crews observed airborne lights the nature of which they were unable to identify," continued the statement. "For this fact alone we obviously can only describe the observations as ‘Unidentified Flying or Airborne Objects’. Hence referring to them as UFO’s, as that is what they were."

"We have no idea as to the origin of the objects and as yet we have not yet come across any standard explanation for what the objects could have been," it concluded.

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