Original subtitles

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

ANNOUNCER: This program is rated PG, and contains

mature subject matter.

Viewer discretion is advised.

)

- [Narrator] Tonight on "Unidentified,"

a startling investigation.

Are UFOs a threat to the thousands

of commercial airplanes in our skies?

And the millions of passengers on board.

- Something was coming up underneath me,

unverifiable, unidentifiable but undeniable.

- [Narrator] Airline pilots, once afraid to speak out.

- If you even uttered a word of this,

you were gonna lose your career, point blank.

- [Narrator] What are these objects that are being seen?

- [Man] It's pulsating too, man, that is nuts.

- [Narrator] From the cockpits of America's airlines.

- [Man] There's something just passed over.

- If one of these did hit one of our airplanes,

it most likely would kill everybody on board.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Everything we know about UFOs is changing.

Thanks to a team led by former

Pentagon UFO investigator, Lue Elizando.

- That is real, whatever that is.

- [Narrator] And former top intelligence official,

Chris Mellon.

- This is a current, continuing phenomenon.

It's happening, it continues to happen.

- [Narrator] They discovered five unique characteristics

that UFOs have in common, called the five observables.

They also released ground breaking videos.

That forced the Navy to admit its pilots

were coming face to face with unidentified objects.

- [Reporter] The US Navy made a shocking admission today.

- [Reporter] Strange flying objects caught on tape

by their own fighter pilots are in fact, UFOs.

- [Narrator] Now a new wave of military witnesses

is coming out of the shadows.

- [Man] I'd never seen anything move like that.

Shape, size, speed, it's clearly unidentified.

- [Narrator] The team is united on a new mission.

Connect the dots to reveal the truth about UFOs.

- [Man] This thing had no capability

like anything on Earth.

- [Narrator] And warn the world about

the dangers they might represent.

- [Chris] Carl Sagan once famously said,

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."

He was absolutely right.

But now we have the proof.

(jet engine whirring)

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Lue Elizando is investigating the link

between UFOs and commercial airliners.

From his time in government tracking UFO reports,

he knows commercial pilots are seeing something but what?

- The question is, is there some sort of underlying interest

that these have potentially with commercial aircraft?

If pilots are saying they're seeing these things,

we have to take it seriously.

- [Narrator] Today, Elizando is meeting with Scott Goodnow,

a pilot for a major airline who is coming forward

for the first time with his own shocking encounter.

- Scott, thank you very much for spending

this afternoon with me here today.

- Sure.

- [Lue] So Scott Goodnow is a captain for a major commercial

carrier but he also has military experience

with the United States Air Force also flying.

In this particular case, you kinda get best of both worlds.

- [Narrator] In October, 2016, Goodnow was the pilot

of a flight from Memphis to Los Angeles.

His Airbus 320 was carrying nearly 200 passengers.

- It was just beautiful weather out,

nice, smooth conditions and I was just kinda scanning

the sky and I was looking back

towards the lights of Phoenix.

- [Narrator] That's when he says he saw

a strange object in the distance.

- I noticed a orange spherical shape.

It was brighter than any of the lights on the ground

and brighter than any of the lights in the sky

and it was in an unusual position,

it was right on the horizon.

It just looked different than anything in the sky.

The center of the aircraft had some

sort of an aura around it.

It looked like there was some sort of light pulsating

in the middle. - [Lue] Okay.

- [Narrator] Goodnow says the orb suddenly changed course.

- It started moving at an angle toward us.

It was getting bigger and I knew

that thing was getting closer.

Eventually it got close enough that I took my phone out

and took a picture of it.

You can see the northwest edge.

- [Lue] Holy s--, yeah, there it is.

- [Scott] And if you swipe.

- [Lue] Oh, man.

- [Scott] That was the second photo I took

as it was getting closer

and last, the third of the three,

that was the closest

and what looks like an aura, some sort of an aura around it.

In the middle you can kinda see a stripe of some sort.

- [Narrator] The UFO that appeared to be coming straight

for Goodnow's plane was exhibiting one of the five

observable, anti-gravity.

- These luminous orbs have been described as having

no control surfaces, no flight surface,

no apparent means of propulsion and you also have

this ability to defy Earth's natural gravity.

I know it's hard to explain from a cockpit,

the size something is but how big?

- When it got close to us, it looked

significantly bigger than us.

I've seen a lot of airplanes that are somewhat

close to us and they looked much smaller than this thing.

- You're at 36,000 feet, what was your air speed?

- Oh, approximately 520 miles per hour.

- [Narrator] Captain Goodnow called air traffic control

but they said they couldn't see

any object on their radar near his plane.

- Literally, as quickly as I saw it, it just disappeared.

Like a light in a room being turned off.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Could what Goodnow saw

be a conventional object?

Or is it something else?

- There are an extraordinary number of drone sightings

being reported these days by commercial airline pilots.

They're typically easily to distinguish

from UAP or UFO reports.

- [Narrator] To Chris Mellon, this object

was not performing like a drone.

- [Chris] They're typically only a few hundred

to a couple of thousand feet in elevation.

They're a foot or two across.

They're moving at slow speeds.

- [Narrator] Elizondo recently investigated

a similar object seen by an airline pilot

off the south American coast.

The orb wasn't red but shared other characteristics

with the one seen by Goodnow.

- You don't see wings and control surfaces

and ailerons, what you see is this object

that seems to be surrounded in this fuzzy glow.

There are enough observations and similarities

that we may be dealing with related technologies.

In fact, what we perceive as visible light,

is actually a Doppler shift of energy.

What we are perceiving is a shifting of the light

in the visible spectrum and so that's why maybe some

of these orbs have different colors.

- [Chris] There is a legitimate safety issue.

There have been close calls that commercial

pilots have reported also.

The potential for midair collisions is increasing.

- This stuff needs to be disclosed.

- [Narrator] Goodnow is not alone.

Over the past few years, there have been several

high profile encounters between UFOs

and commercial aircraft.

In March, 2020, the captain and co-pilot of an airliner,

en route to Memphis, Tennessee, captured video

of this unknown object over Mexico.

- [Narrator] In 2018, in the skies over Arizona,

two pilots reported a mysterious craft racing overhead.

- [Narrator] Months earlier, two F-15s were scrambled

after multiple commercial pilots

reported another fast moving unidentified object.

- [Narrator] And like many pilots,

Goodnow didn't just have one encounter.

He had another sighting years earlier

in the skies over Las Vegas that baffles him to this day.

Coming up on "Unidentified."

- What was the distance between you

and that object that you saw?

- Within 20 miles.

- [Lue] Okay, so close enough to really get a decent look at it.

- Yeah, close enough that we were getting nervous.

- [Narrator] And another pilot reports a UFO

came so close, he thought it would hit his plane.

- Some object was coming up underneath me.

I said it if gets inside 100 feet, I'm gonna maneuver.

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] Scott Goodnow is a former US Air Force pilot

who now flies for a major airline.

His encounter with a UFO raises troubling safety questions

about unidentified objects near passenger planes.

Now, Goodnow reveals he's had more than one encounter.

In December of 2009, he was first officer

on a flight preparing to land in Las Vegas

when another strange object appeared in the sky.

(dramatic music)

- [Scott] We started to descent into Las Vegas.

It was around 11 o'clock p.m.

And we had a visual encounter with,

the only way I could describe it, it's like a giant

radio antenna but this antenna was as high as we were

and we were at 35,000 feet at the time.

And it had strobe lights.

It was stationary

and I was the first one to see it simply 'cause

it was just right at our 12 o'clock position

so straight off the nose.

- How many people were with you that day in the cockpit?

- Just one pilot, he was pretty concerned

because our trajectory, we were going right at it.

- [Narrator] At 35,000 feet, Goodnow and his pilot

are heading right toward the object.

- What was the distance between you

and that object that you saw?

- Within 20 miles.

- [Lue] Okay. So close to really get a good look at it.

- Yeah, close enough that we were getting nervous.

- Okay.

I imagine flying at the speed you guys fly,

20 miles comes up pretty quick.

- It does.

- He's gotta make a split decision as to, first of all,

identify what the hell it is and second of all,

can I avoid it, is it in my way?

He's got the lives of 200 other souls

sitting in the back of his aircraft.

- [Narrator] Goodnow and his pilot take evasive action.

- They are an aircraft that is not super highly

maneuverable, it's not responsive, it's not nimble.

It's designed for comfort and safety

not to take evasive maneuvers and pull a five G turn

and avoid a collision.

- We did get a vector off course from air traffic control

because we didn't wanna hit this thing.

- That's interesting, what was their reaction

when you radioed into air traffic?

- I don't know if he understood what I was asking for 'cause

usually when we ask for radar vectors,

it's cause of weather.

- What was the atmospheric conditions that night?

- Clear skies.

- [Lue] What was your visibility?

- Clear in a million.

- I gotta ask the obvious question.

How do we know that maybe it wasn't just ambient light

in the cockpit? - Sure.

- That was reflecting off of the cockpit window

and that's what you're seeing.

- One of the first things we did, we actually

turned all the lights, interior lights in the cockpit down

to make sure that we could debunk any ambient lights

that we were seeing reflecting off the windshield.

And when we turned all the lights down, that's when we

were able to get a good look at the lights in front of us

that we're looking at.

- [Lue] Ahh.

- [Lue] Some folks may ask, okay, maybe they're helicopters.

- First of all, I know that helicopters just can't get up

to 35,000, conventional helicopters

just can't get that high.

- Sure.

- [Scott] And I ended up querying

air traffic control about it.

And air traffic control contacted Nellis

Air Force Base approach control 'cause

we were close to their airspace.

- [Narrator] Nearby Nellis Air Force Base confirms

they have nothing on their scopes

but then another airplane radios in to air traffic control.

- Shortly after, an American Airlines flight

from the south asked the same questions.

They made a call to Air Traffic Control

and said that we see the same thing

and they were coming from the opposite.

So, they were south of the object,

we were north of the object.

- Oh that's interesting, okay.

- So two different perspectives, same story.

- At any time, were you or the American Airlines or air

traffic control able to get a radar hit on this thing?

- [Scott] None.

- [Lue] Were any reports filed?

- [Scott] I did file something,

never heard back

and I hear from other pilots that did the same thing

that that's kind of a common thing.

When you make these calls or you file these reports,

there are never follow ups.

I haven't experienced a follow up,

I know people that have done it.

Never experience a follow up.

I think that's pretty frustrating.

- Yeah, good, absolutely.

- [Narrator] As a pilot, responsible for hundreds

of passengers, Goodnow believes there's too much

at stake to stay in the shadows.

- Looking back, if one of these did hit one of our airplanes

it most likely would kill everybody on board.

- [Narrator] Goodnow says he doesn't know

why no one followed up on his report.

But what is known is that the Las Vegas area

is a hot spot for UFO sightings.

Las Vegas is less than 100 miles from Area 51.

The US Government testing ground

for highly classified experimental aircraft.

Could what Goodnow saw have been

classified military technology?

- Out in Groomlake, Area 51, there was a lot of new stuff

that had come out in the black world programs

that were highly classified.

- [Narrator] Bill Scott is a former Air Force flight test

engineer, an expert on secret US military technology.

- The engineers, scientists, had a chance to try

a lot of different things, so there was a full gamut

of objectives, of needs, so

they tried these different shapes.

- Mr. Goodnow is describing what looked to him

like some sort of antenna structure.

The question is, was it an antenna?

Or was it something entirely different?

It's not the first time I heard about

an antenna like structure in the sky.

Are they related?

- Because they're in the black world,

they're still very classified.

We know for a fact out in Groom Lake, Area 51,

there were tons of sightings.

Could that explain some of the phenomenon

that people are reporting over the years?

- [Narrator] Elizando sits down with fellow team members,

all government insiders to review the story.

They examine the 2016 encounter

with an unidentified orb over Phoenix.

- [Lue] Within a few minutes,

the thing now is parallel with him,

here and close enough, we started at 20 miles away

is now five miles away and is actually passing them up.

- [Tom] What data are we consistently

getting from these guys?

- [Lue] So we're getting these orbs that pulsate

their light, they disappear like that, either blink out

or you see them go to the horizon.

There is this weird aura around them that

we have continued to see over and over and over again

with other reports.

Ah, this particular case he had photograph,

three photographs of it.

What I'm trying to do for us, it to try to cast wide net.

It's great to have folks, like a commercial pilot,

who's also military, coming out and saying these things

on camera, who's still a commercial pilot,

right now, flying.

- [Narrator] Aware of the dangers in speaking up,

most pilots remain silent.

- [Tom] And it's a risk for him.

- [Lue] It is a risk, and he's saying,

look, there's a lot of taboo, there's a lot of stigma

associated with this, a lot of guys don't wanna come forward

because they don't wanna be taken off flight status.

- Would that happen, they literally reporting

could potentially get taken off flights?

- [Lue] Absolutely you could.

- Crazy thing is, when they made

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind,"

in the beginning scene, you know, the pilots,

and they go, do you wanna report it and both pilots

in the movie say no, but here we are, pilots

are still acting the same way.

- [Narrator] While many commercial pilots continue

to report sightings of unidentified objects,

none have ever appeared to come close enough

to strike the plane.

But now, according to one pilot's never before heard

testimony, one almost did.

Coming up on "Unidentified." (jet engine whirrs)

- You have to make a split second decision coming soon

and the worst case scenario is not even thinkable.

(dramatic music)

was getting closer.] I kg

Eventually it got close enough that I took my phone out

and took a picture of it.

- [Narrator] After interviewing an airline pilot

who had to take evasive action to avoid hitting a UFO.

- Thanks for taking the time to be with us today,

thank you so much. - My pleasure.

- I really appreciate it.

- [Narrator] Lue Elizondo meets a new pilot who claims

the UFO intercepted his plane in one of the closest

alleged encounters on record.

- [Lue] Please have a seat.

- [Production Crewmember] Peter take one.

(slate claps)

- So I was a pretty experienced captain, seen a lot.

In the military, I was a night instructor.

I had a lot of experience under my belt at that point.

- [Narrator] Peter Kiriazes flew multiple aircraft

from fighter jets to the Boeing 777 for more than 30 years.

- [Lue] This is a guy who winds up joining the Marine Corps

and becoming a covert attack helicopter pilot

but then makes a decision to move up to becoming

a Marine Corps fighter pilot.

Pete is one of those guys who's trained to actually

go into combat and look for trouble.

- [Narrator] In 2003, Captain Kiriazes says

he had a UFO encounter that would haunt him for years

and underscore what's at stake for millions of passengers.

- [Peter] It was a little bit after 9-11.

Everybody was a little sensitive

so we felt a little more of a bond to our passengers.

It was a beautiful night, no clouds, smooth air.

We blasted off from Dallas Fort Worth.

We had one leg left to Charlotte.

The airplane was functioning perfectly,

got up to 35,000 feet, we started cruising

and everybody just relaxed.

And then all of a sudden, I get a radar altimeter display

and it immediately just pops on.

- [Narrator] A radar altimeter is designed to let the pilot

know how close the plane is to the ground.

- It's a simple system, it's just emitting

a straight, vertical radar beam.

When you transition to landing, it'll go 100 feet,

50 feet, 20 feet, 10 feet.

So at 35,000 feet cruising along, I get a radar altimeter

display at 25 hundred feet.

It has to bounce off something, it can't just generate.

- [Narrator] Captain Kiriazes is shocked.

The altimeter is telling him something is only 25 hundred

feet directly below his lane.

- And I'm thinking it's gotta be just erroneous,

it's gotta be just a mistake.

- But then the situation becomes much more serious.

- So then it goes, 22, 23,

20, 18, 17 and then it stops.

The first officers and I just immediately

snapped to attention, some object

was coming up underneath me, unverifiable,

unidentifiable but undeniable.

- They've called the tower, tower says, "We see nothing.'

Radar, nothing on radar, there's nothing squawking.

Squawking is a term that they use for something

that is pinging with a transponder in a frequency

that we can identify as being a friendly aircraft.

- [Narrator] Then as the captain and his co-pilot

continue to monitor the radar altimeter.

The mysterious object makes moves again.

And then it goes, 18, 17, 50, 12.

And it went to a thousand feet.

It was behaving in a way that wouldn't really

be logical if it was broken.

So at this point, I'm thinking, well, let's make some turns.

You're allowed to make loose shallow S turns

without getting air traffic control busy or upset

so we made some shallow S turns

and you know, we're kind of trying to look

over our wing and below us or behind us

and we couldn't see anything.

- He's not willing to jump to any conclusion

of what this might be, he goes through the necessary

process of elimination, okay, could it be this,

no, could it be that, no, can it be this, no.

- And then it went 800, 700, 500, 400,

300 and it stopped.

I mean the worst possible situation to be in as a captain,

your brain says this can't be happening

but you have to deal in the here and now in the present

so then it goes 200,

then it goes 100.

- How close is 100 feet when you're flying an aircraft

at 525 miles an hour at 35,000 feet?

100 feet is, it's a thumbnail away

from where you're at and that distance

can be closed in literally a fraction of a second.

- The worst case scenario is not even thinkable.

You have the responsibility of all these lives.

You have to make a split second decision,

coming soon and you have nothing to base it on

but one bit of information.

- [Narrator] If Captain Kiriazes' readings are correct,

something is flying directly under his plane and closing in.

With nearly 100 passengers on board.

He readies himself to take control.

- If you've ever seen a jet, they've got a little

button here, it's called the auto-pilot button,

my thumb was hovering over the auto pilot button.

I said, if it gets inside 100 feet, I'm gonna maneuver.

- [Narrator] Captain Kiriazes keep his eyes locked

on the altimeter reading of 100 feet.

- It just stayed there, it seemed just eternal,

it was just so long.

And then it just went away

and at that point, our heart rate's going pretty fast

and we thought, what the heck just happened?

- [Narrator] A short time later, the flight lands

in Charlotte and Captain Kiriazes

begins looking for answers.

- I checked the log book on that airplane.

It never had happened before

and in all the 30 years of flying with a radar altimeter,

that has never happened.

With anybody I've ever talked to, it's never happened.

- [Narrator] Experts are at a loss as to what

could've been beneath the plane.

- I've talked to some very brilliant pilots.

Air Force Academy, Naval Academy and I've posed this

to them many times and no one can really give me a good

answer and so the conclusion is there's something else

with a technology that's much more sophisticated than ours

that's operating with an additional set

of physical laws and rules.

- [Narrator] Pilots like Captain Kiriazes will never forget

what they saw and they aren't the only one seeing UFOs

near passenger airliners.

Air traffic controllers, the eyes on the ground

are coming forward with chilling testimony.

(jet engine roars)

Coming up on "Unidentified."

- The pilot says they had lights in the middle

with strobes on the end, it was star shaped

and it was about 300 to 400 feet long.

(dramatic music)

- [Lue] Howdy, Robert. - [Robert] Howdy.

Thank you very much for joining us today.

We really appreciate it.

- [Narrator] Luis Elizondo is meeting with Robert Schlenker

an air traffic controller who was trained in the military.

For more than 30 years, Schlenker has guided

thousands of commercial planes to safety.

On May 25 1995, Schlenker arrived for his shift

in Albuquerque, New Mexico,

to learn that an airline pilot had reported a UFO

just minutes earlier to air traffic controllers

on the outgoing shift.

- The evening shift guy, he gives us a briefing.

He said, "Hey, this guy sees something out there."

Don't know what it is.

- [Narrator] Not long after the incident,

an independent civilian UFO organization

created a report on the strange encounter.

They also uncovered audio tapes of conversations

between the pilot and air traffic controllers.

- [Robert] The pilot said they had lights in the middle

with strobes on the end.

They was star shaped, this was horizontal,

and it was about 300 to 400 feet long.

- There's nothing painting, painting is a term that they use

at different radar can hit something

and get a signature off of, that object has been painted.

- [Narrator] The object is displaying

one of the five observables known as low observability.

The ability for an object to cloak or conceal itself.

- So you have pilot testimony up here,

saying they're seeing something.

And okay, well could it be an aircraft?

There are some airships, there are some dirigibles.

Lockheed has a very large airship,

but they do not fly at 30,000 feet

and they're still not 400 feet long.

(instrumental music)

- [Narrator] Schlenker takes over the shift

and continues to investigate the reported UFO.

- Now, it's Robert's job to figure out what the hell it is.

So what does he do they get on the horn

with folks like NORAD to say,

"Hey, are you seeing this as well?"

- [Narrator] NORAD is the North American

Air Defense Command.

It's a joint US, Canada defense organization,

established in 1957 as an early warning system

in case of a Soviet nuclear attack.

(rocket engine roars)

- So this audio file is actually has your voice on it?

- [Lue] Is that correct? - Yes.

- [Narrator] Schlenker explains to the NORAD operator

exactly what the airline pilot reported seeing.

- [Robert] Yeah.

- He says, "Yeah, Fox Mulder X-Files UFO."

It does not fit any normal profile

or characteristic of any known aircraft.

- [Narrator] The NORAD operator tells Schlenker

they don't see anything on their radar.

But then a short time later, he gets a call.

- [Narrator] Search only means the object

wasn't emitting a transponder code,

which is used to identify aircraft

and help avoid midair crashes.

And ultimately, the mysterious cigar shaped UFO disappears.

It wasn't the only time civilian air traffic controllers

guiding commercial airliners turned to NORAD

when tracking an object on their scopes they can't identify.

- Hey, Jim, how are you?

- I'm doing wonderful, Chris. Nice to see you.

- [Narrator] Colonel Jim Cobb

was the senior command director

at NORAD's Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado from 2004 to 2008.

- [Schlenker] NORAD is responsible

for North American aerospace.

They have a network of sensors and resources,

millions of tracks a year.

If there's any single one that is unidentified,

they try to account for it.

- [Narrator] Cheyenne Mountain is a critical part

of NORAD's airspace surveillance operations.

The command center is carved deep into the rock

to protect the United States against a nuclear attack.

- [Schlenker] I think it's very significant

that Colonel Cobb is willing to speak

because this kind of phenomenon is very real

and warrants more attention than it's getting.

(instrumental music)

- [Narrator] In 2008, Colonel Cobb arrived for duty

and found the command center pulsing with activity.

- As I walked into the command center,

the track had already been detected.

The feeling from the command center was that it was

in the extreme northeast of the NORAD airspace

and gained interest to the civilians.

- [Narrator] Civilian air traffic controllers

in the northeast had picked up an unidentified object

on their radar scopes near the coast of Canada,

heading south into American airspace.

It's on a path not far from the one taken

by dozens of passenger planes coming from Europe to the US.

- The entire room was standing.

It's not unusual to have an unknown track.

And it's usually, the vast majority of the time

resolved fairly quickly, some kind of equipment degradation

or you can piece together where they are,

where they may be going.

This had none of that

- Was the track following a conventional flight profile

in terms of speed, altitude, direction?

- No, it was essentially east coast, north to south.

It did not have any electronic

encoding,

that if it was a civilian airliner,

you would get feedback from their transponder.

- Do you recall, by chance, what altitude or speed

this object was moving?

- It did not give any readout.

And I was not privy to the ground speed.

It did not paint an altitude or any identifying features.

So that's all we had to go on.

- [Narrator] As this unknown object continued

down the east coast, NORAD commanders are confronted

with the question.

Is this UFO a threat to the US or other air traffic?

And if so, how to respond?

- [Announcer] Coming up on Unidentified.

- Command at NORAD initiated a scramble.

We launched the first group of alert fighters to intercept.

(dramatic music)

(jet engines roar)

- [Narrator] In 2008, Colonel Jim Cobb was on duty

at NORAD's command center in Colorado,

when a UFO was tracked in the US airspace

along the east coast, not far from a busy corridor

used by dozens of commercial airlines

flying in from Europe each day.

After repeated attempts to identify the target failed,

NORAD commanders were left with only one choice.

- Command at NORAD initiated a scramble.

And as such the alert forces in the northeast

launched in pursuit of the unknown track.

They chase it or to identify it down the coast.

- [Narrator] The fighter jets are scrambled,

but can't find the target.

- After the initial assets were launched,

subsequent alert fighters down the coast

were also launched in an attempt to gain some

identification of the track.

- [Narrator] Every Squadron that searched

along the coast for the target comes up empty.

- Were they able to get a visual

or radar lock on at any point?

- No,

not at all.

- What do you attribute that to?

- Range, speed, possibly altitude.

Again from group of interceptors all the way down,

nobody caught it.

- And then it exited out over the Caribbean, is that right?

- Yes, that is correct.

It went all the way down the eastern seaboard

until it exited the airspace

that these civilians were monitoring.

And then all of a sudden, the room got real quiet

and a lot of people were going,

"No clue, no clue what it is."

- [Narrator] No one was ever able to find an explanation

for the incident.

But what Elizondo and Chris Mellon are discovering

is that these UFO sightings are often

near heavily trafficked commercial flight paths.

On the west coast, most commercial flights

make the journey to Asia on a route

that takes them over the Northwest and Alaska.

- By the way, we've had reports in the past,

that Alaska does tend to be a hotspot for UFOs.

- [Narrator] With so many airlines flying

that Pacific corridor, is there potential

for a midair impact with a UFO?

To gather more data,

Elizondo is meeting with a civilian contractor

who saw something while working in Alaska.

- [Lue] Howdy, sir.

- [Narrator] But still works closely

with a government agency and wants to remain anonymous.

- Pleasure to meet you.

- [Lue] I do know that there are consequences

for coming on camera.

They're still involved with a US federal agency

in aviation and they've got a lot to lose.

- [Narrator] In 1999, this unnamed witness

and two other workers were sent to repair

a navigation beacon near Cold Bay

in Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands.

(instrumental music)

- The navigation system at Cold Bay is very, very critical.

And so when that navigation source is down,

it can lead to a lot of delays,

and plus it's used as a waypoint for flights

that are over-heading Cold Bay as well.

It was our very first day going out there for this retrofit

and we could see volcanoes and glaciers every which way,

not a cloud in the sky.

- [Narrator] The over 9,000 foot tall Mount Shishaldin

towered on the horizon.

- My coworker and I are parked in the truck,

looking at the Shishaldin volcano,

when a silver, metallic, shiny disk

came at a high rate of speed approaching from the right.

We watched it probably for about five miles,

it took just seconds to cover that distance.

And then it came to an abrupt sudden stop

at the base of Shishaldin.

- [Narrator] They say they gazed in astonishment

at the stationary shiny disk for over a minute.

The disk then makes another rapid move.

- Suddenly, it shot vertically up in the air

towards the top of the volcano and again,

it stopped there abruptly for a minute, maybe two minutes.

And then it zoomed off.

And didn't leave no contrail.

It was just gone, I don't know how

how the object did what it did.

But I'd seen with my own two eyes.

(instrumental music)

- Now, I've heard this before.

And as he's telling me this,

I'm actually starting to get chills

because I am now reliving several other events

where people have told me the exact same thing.

I think the observables here, instantaneous acceleration,

I think it's hypersonic velocity,

and maybe even trans-medium travel,

if it did indeed, wind up going from an atmospheric

environment to a near vacuum environment.

- Eventually we looked at each other and said,

"Did you see what I just saw?"

And we both agreed we'd seen what we saw

and went on about our business.

- [Narrator] The technicians also agreed to stay quiet.

We've talked about it amongst ourselves

over the years, but we've never talked to anybody else

for fear of retribution or getting our clearances pulled

or something such as that.

There's

no potential upside.

Many people, until they've experienced it

or witnessed it themselves are disbelievers.

They think you're crazy or something

but having seen it, that certainly made me a believer.

- [Narrator] Elizondo believes the time has come

for all civilian pilots and contractors

who have witnessed UFOs to come out of the shadows.

But can he get anyone to take action?

- [Narrator] Coming up on Unidentified,

- [Lue] It's a brave new world guys.

There are all sorts of things in our skies

that we don't know what they are.

- It's a significant thing where I can never forget it.

There's a 15 minutes out of a 30 year career

that will forever last in your head.

(dramatic music)

(ominu)

- [Narrator] Luis Elizondo has been investigating

the connection between UFOs and commercial aircraft,

speaking to commercial pilots

about their harrowing encounters.

- [Lue] Howdy, Robert.

- [Scott] And I noticed a orange spherical type shape

that just caught my eye.

When it got close to us,

it looked significantly bigger than us.

- There was a object coming up underneath my aircraft

rapidly, your brain says, "This can't be happening."

But you have to deal and they're here and now

in the present.

When you go up into a situation where you have nothing

to go on, and you have to make it up as you go.

That's not a good place to be.

(instrumental music)

- [Narrator] With 10s of thousands of commercial flights

taking off around the world each day,

will more pilots come forward

with accounts of UFO sightings?

(instrumental music)

- I've had information from other pilots,

given to me about things that they've seen and done,

that it just seems to be just overwhelming.

It's getting to the point now where this isn't a surprise.

- It's a brave new world, guys.

There are all sorts of things in our skies

that we don't know what they are,

and I think they could pose an issue for flight safety.

Commercial pilots are getting concerned.

They have sometimes hundreds of people

literally, their life is in their hands.

You have in the back of that aircraft, families

and husbands and wives and children and brothers

and sisters and sons and daughters.

- It is an increasingly prominent issue.

So, it is important for pilots to report this information

so that action can be taken.

- [Narrator] But Elizondo still wants to know,

are UFOs specifically targeting commercial aircraft?

And if so, why?

- Is there an inherent interest as we have seen

between UFO activity and let's say our nuclear capabilities

or our military aircraft?

And is that connection the same between UFOs

and commercial aircraft?

I really don't know.

The more data we have, the more we will have to work with

to hopefully determine an answer, to find a solution

of what these things really are.

But at the same time, we're not gonna find out

what these are unless they're reported.

- One of these did hit one--

- [Narrator] But airline pilots like Scott Goodenout

and Peter Kariotis have come forward

to report what they've seen.

Many, still feel afraid to speak out.

- [Chris] I think the airlines is really where the issue is

for most commercial pilots concerned about their career.

It's clear that they haven't had a culture

that encourages reporting and candor on this topic.

Too often, unfortunately, the climate has not been favorable

simply to telling the truth

and reporting what you're seeing.

- There's a certain persona,

especially major airline pilots, who want to be seen

as pragmatic, logical, calculating, predictable.

And some of these things move into an area that might

have some people think that's a little more of a fantasy

and maybe there's a little bit of a stigma to it.

They are, "I got this crazy pilot."

- [Lue] Whether you're American Airlines or Delta

or any other carrier, you should encourage your pilots

to report something if they don't know what it is.

There are more commercial aircraft

over the lower 48 states

than there are military aircraft at any given time.

So, commercial pilots are really our eyes in the sky.

They should feel enabled to report that information

without fear of retribution or consequences.

- [Scott] I had an opportunity to come in and talk about

something that I think is very important

and it's the safety of flying.

It's an issue of safety when it comes to these objects

coming as close as they do to these civilian airplanes.

- The public doesn't know.

The public doesn't know.

It was very scary.

Yeah, because when you have an object within 50 feet

of an aircraft moving at 35,000 feet at 550 knots

at 50 feet, that's (alarm beeping)

not good.

It's a significant thing where I can never forget it.

There's a 15 minutes out of a 30 year career

that will forever last in your head.

(upbeat music) (jet engine roars)