Airline Pilot Reports Unidentified "Long, Cylindrical Object" over New Mexico

Updated 2/24/21

Steve Douglass, part of the interceptors network and author of The Comprehensive Guide to Military Monitoring, recently shared a February 21st UFO sighting report to his blog, Deep Black Horizon

The sighting was recorded off of his radio scanner from “an American Airlines passenger jet reporting an unidentified object that flew close and just over the aircraft.”

Douglass said that at approximately 1:19 PM CST “on the Albuquerque Center frequency of 127.850 MHz or 134.750 MHz (recording wasn't frequency stamped)” the pilot of American Airlines Flight 2292 (AAF 2292) radioed air traffic control to ask:

Do you have any targets up here? We just had something go right over the top of us. I hate to say this, but it looked like a long cylindrical object that almost looked like a cruise missile type of thing, moving really fast right over the top of us.

Douglass said he checked live flight trackers Flightradar24 and Flight Aware, and they showed that AAF 2292 "was over the northeast corner of New Mexico west of Clayton, New Mexico.”

Furthermore, he said, “No reply was monitored by Albuquerque Center because local (Amarillo) air traffic walked on top of it. AAF 2292 was near flight level 370 [37,000 feet] at the time of the report."

"No significant military aircraft presence was noted on ADS-B logs," he added.

The aircraft went on to land in Phoenix, Arizona, following the incident.

A map of the aircraft’s flight path is available here, and a recording of the pilot reporting the sighting can be downloaded here.

"Talking to an ex-military pilot I know, he says that for them to see this object [it] had to be coming at them practically head-on,” Douglass told Amarillo, Texas, news station ABC7. “So whatever it was, came fast and right at them and right over them which gave them a big enough scare they had to report it.”

However, as noted in his blog, there did not appear to be any authorized military activity in the area that day. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) should have been notified in the event there was.

“When tests occur the military notifies the FAA, aircraft are kept out of the area and their schedules and strict flight lanes at aircraft need to stay in to not interfere with these tests,” Douglass said. “That's not what happened [last Sunday].”

As of Tuesday morning, American Airlines had sent ABC7 the following statement:

Following a debrief with our Flight Crew and additional information received, we can confirm this radio transmission was from American Airlines Flight 2292 on [February 21st].

It's now up to the FAA to investigate the encounter to see if the object came from a branch of the U.S. military, a foreign power, or perhaps somewhere much stranger.

The Singular Fortean Society has submitted a FOIA request to the FAA for more information on this sighting, and any further developments will be published as they are received.

Two airline pilots reported a similar sighting over southeastern Arizona to Albuquerque Air Traffic Center in New Mexico on February 24th, 2018.

The witnesses, a Learjet pilot and an American Airlines pilot, saw the strange object over southeastern Arizona—near Tucson and Davis-Montham Air Force Base—at around 3:30 p.m.

The Learjet was flying at an altitude of 37,000 feet at the time of the sighting; the same altitude as AAF 2292.

The Learjet pilot radioed ground control to ask if there was any reported air traffic above him, but was told by air traffic control that there was not, to which the pilot replied that he had seen something pass overhead.

"I don't know what it was," the pilot said. "It wasn't an airplane but it was—the path was going in the opposite direction."

Air traffic control was not receiving radar returns of the object, and contacted American Airlines flight 1095 to confirm that an unidentified flying object was present in the area. The pilot of that flight responded that something had, in fact, passed over them.

"Something just passed us," the American Airlines flight confirmed. "Like a—I don't know what it was, but it was at least 2-3,000 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 the opposite direction,” he said.

While the object did appear well-lit or highly reflective, the pilots did not believe it to be a balloon.

FAA mid-states public affairs manager Lynn Lunsford released a statement saying that the FAA regularly corresponds with military and civilian organizations to ensure all aerial objects are accounted for, although in this instance they did not appear to have any information regarding other aircraft in the area.

"Other than the brief conversation between two aircraft, the controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area," Lunsford said. "We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons."

The sighting raised concerns at the time about the safety of commercial airlines, given the object's proximity to commercial aircraft and the FAA's seeming ignorance of its presence. Concerns which appear to still be very relevant today.

To report your own encounter with the impossible, reach out to us directly at the Singular Fortean Society through our contact page.

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