Original subtitles

NARRATOR: Terrifying encounters at 40,000 feet.

So I kind of looked over my left shoulder,

and there’s this bright light in our face.

It’s a pulsating orb.

Look at that, dude. Look at that.

NARRATOR: Pilot accounts of UFOs

taking control of their aircraft.

BILL BIRNES: Goes to move the yoke,

and the yoke is moving on itself.

If it climbs any further,

it will stall out.

NARRATOR: And entire jumbo jets

disappearing into thin air.

How do you have a commercial airliner just vanish?

NARRATOR: Since the dawn of aviation,

pilots have experienced unexplainable events in the sky.

Is it possible that what they have witnessed

are aliens in our airspace?

GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: When you have thousands of pilots

coming forward with encounters

that they’ve witnessed up in the sky,

with so-called UFOs,

I think we should pay more attention

to what these pilots have been saying.

NARRATOR: There is a doorway

in the universe.

Beyond it is the promise of truth.

It demands we question everything

we have ever been taught.

The evidence is all around us.

The future is right before our eyes.

We are not alone.

We have never been alone.

In 2017, The New York Times broke the story

of the U.S. government’s secret investigations

into unexplained aerial phenomena.

And in the years that followed,

a number of sensational UFO videos

have been released, or leaked, to the public.

NARRATOR: Nearly all of the footage

was recorded by cameras

mounted on U.S. Navy fighter jets.

The videos captured the public’s

imagination like no other UFO images

that had come before them...

But Navy pilots are not alone

in witnessing unidentified flying objects.

For decades, shocking encounters

have been reported by non-military,

civilian pilots.

UAP sightings by commercial airline pilots

are a lot more commonplace than what we generally think of.

We’ve seen a lot of the footage from the military,

but we’re actually getting a lot more reports

from our civilian pilots.

There are more civilian pilots than military pilots.

And you have

an exponentially larger amount of flights

with commercial airlines

than you do with military airplanes.

NARRATOR: Japan Airlines Flight 1628

is carrying cargo from Paris, France

to Narita International Airport near Tokyo.

The three-person crew

is led by Captain Kenju Terauchi,

an ex-fighter pilot with over 10,000 hours of flight time.

As the 747 approaches Anchorage,

Captain Terauchi notices two strange lights

out of his cockpit window.

It’s dark. It’s, uh, very early morning. Before sunrise.

These lights are clearly maneuvering.

They are, in relationship to each other,

one is on top of the other,

and they move directly in front of his aircraft.

Now, he’s flying at about 500 miles per hour.

These things are pacing him.

NARRATOR: Captain Terauchi realizes the lights

are strange oval-shaped flying objects,

and they are getting dangerously close to his aircraft.

As bright lights fill the cockpit,

Captain Terauchi radios

the Anchorage Air Traffic Control Center

and asks if they can identify the objects near his plane.

NARRATOR: As Terauchi attempts a series of evasive maneuvers

to avoid a potential collision,

the two UFOs suddenly disappear.

In their place is another object.

One so large, it dwarfs the 747.

RICHARD DOLAN: His words for describing it were, "gigantic spaceship

the size of maybe two aircraft carriers."

Just immense.

Tarauchi sees this massive thing in the sky,

and he’s scared.

NARRATOR: Concerned by Captain Terauchi’s report,

the air traffic controller calls NORAD,

the North American Aerospace Defense Command,

based at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage.

Communication specialists at the airbase

confirm that there is a very large unidentified object

on their radar screens.

Traffic control told them that they could actually

take whatever evasive actions they needed to,

to avoid collision,

and they even dropped down to 4,000 feet

above sea level,

and the thing continued to follow them.

RYAN SPRAGUE: Air traffic control diverted another

commercial flight to come look at this UFO.

And by the time they got there,

the UFO was completely gone.

TSOUKALOS: One of the reasons

why the J.A.L. report is such a big deal is because

the corroborating evidence is overwhelming.

Not only were there eyewitness reports,

but there’s the records of the communication systems

that Terauchi was in touch with,

actual dialogue that happened.

"Hey, we are up here.

We see this. Are you guys seeing this on your radar?"

All this stuff is recorded.

NARRATOR: Once safely grounded,

Captain Terauchi, his copilot

and flight engineer were immediately interviewed

by Alaska Federal Aviation Administration officials

and other special agents.

NICK POPE: There’s an FAA

investigation into this.

There’s lots of documentation.

There’s no real, hard and fast conclusion about this.

And so, the pilot, perhaps out of frustration,

talks to the media.

NARRATOR: In December 1986, one month after the encounter,

Captain Terauchi contacted Kyodo News

and said he believed the mysterious crafts

were of extraterrestrial origin.

The unauthorized statements

prompted Japan Airlines officials

to remove Captain Terauchi from pilot duty,

and assign him to a desk job.

Around the same time, John Callahan,

the FAA’s division chief

of the Accidents and Investigations branch.

learned of the incident

and deemed it worthy of investigation.

DOLAN: John Callahan went to D.C. about this,

and there was a meeting

that was chaired by

one of the top people of the FAA.

This meeting was also attended

by representatives of the FBI,

representatives of the CIA

and representatives of President Reagan’s White House.

They had audiotapes

that were played,

between the pilot and air traffic control,

describing everything that was happening,

and written reports.

And at the end of the meeting,

one of the CIA, uh, agents

stood up and said, "This meeting never happened,

"and we’re confiscating all of the data

that has been, uh, shared here."

Now, Callahan,

he was a little sly, but he was within his rights.

"They never asked me," he said, "if I had a copy

of any of this myself," he said. "Which I did."

He had a copy of the audio recordings, if nothing else.

And a little over a decade later,

shared that with the public.

MICAH HANKS: John Callahan came away with the feeling

that there was essentially a kind of coverup.

The FAA didn’t want the fact

that this incident had occurred to get out.

POPE: I’ve spoken to pilots who have seen

amazing things out there,

but never report it

because of the fear of being disbelieved,

being ridiculed, and

perhaps, being grounded.

You won’t be flying anymore.

So, what do they say? Most times, nothing.

TSOUKALOS: You have countless commercial and private airline pilots

who spend an exorbitant amount of time up in the sky.

And, in my opinion, I think they’re the best people

to discern what is natural

and what is not.

NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists

are concerned,

UFO encounters reported by civilian pilots

provide some of the most compelling evidence

that there is an extraterrestrial presence

in the skies above Earth.

And, according to some pilots,

what they’ve witnessed presents

a serious danger.

NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists,

UFO sightings reported by pilots

are particularly intriguing,

because while accounts of strange phenomena in the sky

date back millennia,

it is only in the past century

that humans have had an aerial vantage point.

DAVID CHILDRESS: For thousands of years,

we could only observe things in the sky

from the ground,

but in the last hundred or so years,

we’ve had the ability to fly.

And so now we’re up in the sky ourselves.

We can discern natural phenomena from powered craft.

NARRATOR: Thousands of pilots

have reported observing

phenomena in the sky that do not resemble any weather anomaly

or man-made aircraft they’ve ever encountered.

Such was the case with Captain Erik Delgado,

who served as an Air Force pilot for ten years

before being hired to fly for FedEx in 2001.

On the evening of March 20, 2020,

Captain Delgado departed from Mexico City

in a Boeing 767 bound for Memphis, Tennessee.

One hour into the flight, Delgado noticed something

strange in the distance.

DELGADO: Usually when we get to altitude, we’ll relax.

I was conversing with my first officer,

and as I’m looking at him,

his eyes got really big

and, uh, his mouth kind of dropped.

And I’m like, what the hell is this guy looking at?

And he goes, "Look at the shooting star,"

and he stops, never-never finished the word, "Star."

And so I kind of looked over my left shoulder,

and if you can, uh, imagine a lighthouse in thin fog,

kind of just a-a spotlight, sort of,

that just kind of came over us, and I thought,

"Oh, my God, it’s another airplane,

"and he’s got a vector toward us.

What’s this clown doing?"

I grabbed the throttles, gripping it with a death grip.

I was getting ready to disconnect the autopilot.

And I’m looking at the screen,

realizing there’s nothing on the screen.

NARRATOR: Delgado immediately used his digital camera

to record the astonishing sight.

NARRATOR: Within minutes of the sighting,

the orb moved towards the plane

at a high rate of speed,

then suddenly stopped short.

DELGADO: My heart was racing still.

Speed doesn’t kill, you know?

Deceleration, stopping, that’s what kills you.

And the fact that this thing stopped like that,

if there were somebody inside there,

you know, um,

our conventional laws of physics and stopping,

they wouldn’t have survived the g-forces,

to come to a stop like that.

NARRATOR: The UAP flew alongside Delgado’s aircraft

at an astonishing

500 miles per hour,

and yet there was no sign

of a propulsion system.

DELGADO: This thing was parked on our wingtip,

about a thousand, 2,000 feet,

and it didn’t move.

With your naked eye, it was just

bright, dim, bright, dim.

And it was very cyclic.

It didn’t waver, it was the same.

And you look through the camera,

and now you could see features in a shape.

NARRATOR: The object continued to track

Delgado’s aircraft for nearly 30 miles.

DELGADO: This thing started rotating,

and started changing colors and it started taking off.

And so, I’m zooming in as fast as I could.

DELGADO: This thing took off with pretty good velocity.

NARRATOR: After making a safe landing,

Delgado shared his videos with

air operations center personnel,

even though his copilot was reluctant

to file an official report.

DELGADO: There was still a stigma, behind the whole thing.

You know, are they gonna ground us?

Are they gonna ask for our medical, you know?

Are we gonna have to go see somebody?

So, I could understand where he was coming from.

HANKS: In recent years, we’ve seen military pilots

being encouraged to come forward

and talk about things they’ve seen.

The same has not necessarily

always extended to commercial pilots

because there isn’t an interest

in collecting information from those pilots

the same as there would be with military pilots,

where in the interest of national security,

if you see something, say something.

But traditionally,

when commercial pilots contacted the FAA,

they have been told, "Hey, you need to talk

to civilian UFO researchers,"

or they don’t actually have a clear idea

of where else they can even log those reports.

So it’s a very different situation.

NARRATOR: Captain Delgado decided not to give the video

to the FAA, and instead, turned it over to

the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena,

or NARCAP,

a civilian organization made up of volunteers

who investigate unidentified aerial sightings.

They concluded that the glowing object

was consistent with that of an exotic craft

with a plasma exterior that could disrupt radar signals.

I think I saw some intelligent anomaly.

It’s amazing, I-I’d like to know

more of the science and the physics

behind what I was looking at, maybe.

But, you know,

see the footage and-and form your own opinions.

TSOUKALOS: Things need to change,

because pilots should be at the forefront

of being free enough

to come forward to report what they saw.

NARRATOR: The FAA has never conducted

an official investigation into pilot Delgado’s incident.

But would they take notice if a UFO sighting

affected an entire airport?

A ramp employee for United Airlines Flight 446

spots a metallic saucer-shaped object

hovering over gate C-17,

between 1,000 and 1,900 feet in the air.

Within minutes, federal authorities

receive nearly a dozen panicked phone calls

from airport personnel.

SPRAGUE: Here you have pilots, here you have

people working at the airport,

and civilians going to get on their flights,

all witness a UFO hovering

directly over one of the gates at the airport.

This UFO was cylindrical in shape.

It was metallic.

NARRATOR: Witnesses estimated the object

to be between 16 and 24 feet in diameter.

POPE: Suddenly, this thing just accelerates vertically,

and punches a hole through the cloud.

Everyone’s staggered by this.

Now, there is a meteorological phenomenon

called a "hole punch cloud."

But that doesn’t really fit with the idea

that there was this metallic craft

hovering before this happened.

STEVEN GREENSTREET: A hole punch cloud is a real phenomena,

but the weather conditions needed

to produce a hole punch cloud

weren’t there that day. (chuckles)

They weren’t there that day.

And so that explanation doesn’t make any sense at all.

WILLIAM HENRY: The Chicago Tribune, they end up filing

a Freedom of Information Act request

with the FAA, and, lo and behold, they get a recording.

So we have a United Airlines supervisor

on the phone with the FAA controller using the word "UFO."

So, once again,

we have a scenario where the FAA,

and we have United Airlines personnel,

in this case, saying there’s nothing to see here,

but, in fact, there was.

NARRATOR: Is it possible the U.S. government

has been concealing evidence

about UAP sightings near our airports?

According to UFO researchers,

it would fit a disturbing pattern

of ignoring what many believe are serious threats

to the millions of people who travel the skies every day.

Threats that are surprisingly well-documented

and sometimes even caught on tape.

NARRATOR: For decades, civilian pilots have been frustrated

by the Federal Aviation Administration’s

refusal to investigate encounters

between commercial airlines and unidentified flying objects.

Skeptics argue that these encounters lack hard data

like telemetry, radar and audio recordings

that would warrant an investigation.

But there have, in fact, been numerous incidents

where viable evidence has been collected,

including an event

involving two aircraft travelling over

the state of Arizona.

In 2018, flying over Arizona,

you’ve got a Learjet, you’ve got an American Airlines jet,

and something zips over the Learjet,

right over top.

And they immediately call ATC.

GREENSTREET: Radar tower says, "We don’t see anything.

We don’t know what the heck it is."

And so, the radar tower calls the American Airlines jet

behind that plane, and says

"Hey, look out for a second.

Object should be coming your way."

NARRATOR: The pilot of the American Airlines jet

initially responds requesting clarification.

NARRATOR: Then, just moments later,

the American Airlines pilot radios back

to air traffic control.

This incident is significant

because there are audio recordings

of the whole incident,

and the pilots actually

use the word, "UFO,"

when they’re talking to the control tower.

NARRATOR: According to researchers, the Arizona encounter

was never openly investigated by the government,

despite the evidence presented in the recordings

between the two pilots and air traffic control.

Neither was another incident,

this one so serious, it required a call

to the U.S. Air Force.

The Oregon coast.

October 25, 2017.

A radar operator spots a fast-moving

unidentified object in a busy commercial flight path.

DELGADO: There were no pilots involved in that initial reporting.

It was just a tower controller and a...

and a radar center operator,

and they’re going back and forth.

NARRATOR: The radar operator contacts air traffic control

in Seattle, Washington.

GREENSTREET: The object has no call sign.

It has no transponder.

It’s not communicating. What is this object?

Pilots in the air start picking it up visually.

Multiple pilots from multiple airlines

flying both north and south up the coast.

And they see this huge white object

moving extremely fast at 37,000 feet.

CHILDRESS: The pilots could see a white light

that was coming at them and moving around,

and they reported it to the control tower

and the pilot said that it was moving erratically.

GREENSTREET: This object was a little bit too close for comfort.

And so they tried to communicate with it.

All the things that this object should have given off

if it was an authorized aircraft, a U.S. aircraft,

a commercial aircraft, weren’t there.

It was just silent.

And so the military scrambled two F-15 fighters

to go intercept this thing.

POPE: Now, you don’t do that lightly. This is a big call.

This is the sort of thing

that you do on a 9/11 type event.

So, what happened?

Why did they take this one so seriously

that a fighter interceptor

was sent up to try and take a look?

NARRATOR: The F-15s race to intercept the UFO,

but this proves more difficult than expected.

CHILDRESS: Once the jets were on their way,

this UFO suddenly shot off in a different direction,

and was very fast, and was able to make

these quick turns, and at very high speeds.

GREENSTREET: At one point, this object changes direction.

It’s flying southbound,

and then turns and goes northbound.

So, the F-15 fighters,

they go there and at the last minute,

as best anyone can guess,

turns and zips out over the Pacific Ocean.

NARRATOR: Observers are shocked

that F-15s, among the nation’s fastest

and most sophisticated fighter jets, are unable

to catch up with the mysterious object.

GREENSTREET: What’s great about this is the audiotapes,

which were released via the Freedom of Information Act.

When you hear the process happen,

from initial sighting

to the scrambling

of military jets,

it’s fascinating to hear that happen.

"What should we do?"

It goes to the Air Force, it goes to NORAD.

It’s there and seen by so many, and then it’s gone.

NARRATOR: These two incidents are considered

to be among a multitude of reports where analyzable

data, including radar, radio transmissions,

telemetry and eyewitness accounts,

offer compelling evidence

of unidentified aerial phenomena.

Yet, to the public’s knowledge,

these dangerous encounters

have never been investigated by the government.

UFO experts believe the flying public

is at significant risk,

and as evidence, point to a mysterious case

where a pilot experienced his worst nightmare

10,000 feet in the air.

NARRATOR: Zihuatanejo, Mexico.

May 3, 1975.

After dropping off passengers at this seaport town

on the Pacific Coast, pilot Carlos de los Santos

embarks on a return trip to Mexico City

in his Piper PA-24 Comanche.

The weather conditions are clear,

and visibility is good, as De los Santos

cruises at 10,000 feet.

One hour into the flight,

he witnesses something unusual.

A gray, wingless object off the left side of his plane.

DOLAN: As he approaches Mexico City,

he notices, basically, a small flying saucer

just above his left wing.

It’s not as large as his aircraft,

and he’s flying a fairly small aircraft.

And he’s like, "What is this?"

And then he looks over to his right and he sees another one.

And then he looks ahead of them,

and there’s one coming at him.

It goes below his aircraft,

and he feels a bump under his aircraft.

And he’s scared out of his mind.

Anyone would be.

But he then realizes that he’s not really

in control of his aircraft.

His aircraft is moving in a way

that seems to respond to these objects, not to him.

He goes to move the yoke,

and the yoke is moving on itself.

The plane starts climbing

to 3,000 meters.

That’s the ceiling of the Piper.

If it climbs any further, it will stall out.

He will lose control.

The plane will fall out of the sky.

DOLAN: He’s actually becoming afraid

because his cabin’s not pressurized.

You get to a certain altitude,

he’s gonna have a hard time breathing.

BIRNES: The theory is that the UFO

that came under the plane,

took control of his plane,

and the UFO’s own magnetic envelope

is lifting the plane higher and higher and higher.

De los Santos is in a panic. He’s giving Mayday calls.

DOLAN: He’s telling them, "There are these

"unidentified objects at my wingtips,

and below me, and I don’t know what to do."

NARRATOR: As the private plane races towards a mountainous area,

the three UAPs disengage from Carlos’s plane

and veer off toward the Mount Popocatépetl volcano

at lightning speed.

As the objects disappear from sight,

Carlos regains control of the plane.

But he quickly realizes his ordeal isn’t over.

DOLAN: He can’t initiate his landing gear

because of the impact that one of these objects

made on his aircraft.

He has to circle around

the airport about ten times.

And he uses a screwdriver

to push the lever to get his, uh,

landing gear to come down,

and he successfully lands his aircraft.

It’s kind of an amazing thing there.

So, he lands his aircraft.

And the story doesn’t end here.

Now he would’ve had his whole career,

reputation ruined, probably, with this,

except for the fact that

Mexican air traffic control tracked these objects also,

and this came out to support him.

This story became a huge news story in Mexico.

Didn’t really make much impact in the United States,

but it was a very big story in Mexico.

NARRATOR: Years later, De los Santos

revealed that in the aftermath of the event,

he was twice approached by mysterious figures

warning him not to speak about his experience.

The first occasion was just before

he was scheduled to be interviewed

by a Mexican television station.

The second happened when De los Santos was set to meet

with the famous UFO investigator, J. Allen Hynek.

Hynek was into the case.

A lot of people were following this case.

And just before he was going to meet with Hynek at some hotel,

he gets another encounter from, um,

one of these men in black,

these tall, pasty, white-skinned guys

who warned him, don’t talk about this.

He was threatened.

And he did actually stop talking about this

for a little while after that.

But as time went by, he-he’s talked about it.

It’s just one of the most incredible

aviation UAP stories that you’re ever gonna hear,

and he got out of it alive.

NARRATOR: Pilot Carlos de los Santos

ultimately emerged from his harrowing

midair encounter unscathed,

but similar confrontations

between civilian planes and UFOs

have led to tragic consequences,

including injuries, crashes

and even loss of life.

NARRATOR: The National UFO Reporting Center,

or NUFORC, has counted

at least 100 cases in the U.S.

where flight safety was impaired

because of close calls with unidentified aerial phenomena.

And in at least one incident,

it appears a collision with a UFO

caused fatal results.

Former NYPD pilot and flight instructor Thomas Preziose

departs from Mobile Downtown Airport,

piloting a single-engine Cessna

with the call sign "Night Ship 282."

The story of Night Ship 282 is quite alarming.

A Hollywood script writer couldn’t come up with this one.

We have a NYPD pilot, a freight hauler,

very experienced flight instructor...

...hauling documents from Mobile, Alabama

up north to Montgomery.

Routine flight.

NARRATOR: Due to poor visibility,

Preziose was flying by his instruments.

Just one minute into the flight,

he spotted something in the distance,

and immediately radioed air traffic control.

MIKE RICKSECKER: He saw what looked like another plane in the sky,

was just confirming that

that was another plane up there.

And then all of a sudden, he’s alarmed.

He’s panicked. Something is coming at him.

BIRNES: This pilot sees an object in front of him

on a collision course with his plane.

What does he do?

He radios a request for permission to deviate.

"I must deviate, I must deviate,"

he says over the radio.

He deviates.

Silence.

The transmission goes dead.

NARRATOR: Five minutes after takeoff,

Night Ship 282 crashes into Big Bateau Bay.

Tragically, Thomas Preziose is killed on impact.

When investigators

from The National Transportation Safety Board,

or NTSB, arrive at the scene,

they discover parts of the Cessna

scattered over an area of nearly 200 yards.

The plane is not just demolished,

it’s almost vaporized.

Something obviously hit the plane.

The props are damaged, the wings are damaged,

the fuselage is damaged.

Wholesale damage inside the mechanics of the airplane.

HENRY: It becomes apparent he has collided

with something in midair.

NARRATOR: A midair collision of such extreme force

would naturally send two wrecks spiraling to the ground.

But an extensive search of the area

produced only one aircraft.

DOLAN: No other wreckage was ever found.

No other craft which would’ve

presumably done this.

The most bizarre thing about this is that there are these

strange red markings

all over parts of the aircraft.

These red markings have not

been identified, as far as I can tell.

And they’re in a variety of places of the aircraft.

The NTSB suggested that whatever it hit

was this color red or had this red coating on it,

and when it hit, it rubbed off on this guy’s craft.

They also found pieces of metal in the wings

that didn’t belong to the plane.

Various pieces of metal were imbedded in the crashed plane

that weren’t part of that plane.

So, something metal, something red.

But at the end of the day, a mystery.

GARY HESELTINE: Clearly, this is one of the rare occasions

where there was a collision that obliterated a plane,

killed the pilot, and the FAA,

the aviation authorities and the investigations that followed

could not explain it,

and to this day, cannot explain it.

CHILDRESS: You have to wonder if this incident,

which caused the death of the pilot,

wasn’t also some extraterrestrial incident

where, perhaps, a flying saucer or other craft

hit this plane,

or the plane itself hit the craft.

NARRATOR: For UFO researchers,

the tragic case of Thomas Preziose

raises the question:

Is it possible that there have been other fatal collisions

with UFOs that have gone unreported?

Or happened before the pilot could radio air traffic control?

As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

it is a question worth investigating

given the number of highly unusual encounters

pilots have started sharing with the public.

And while the FAA

continues to dismiss such reports,

another government agency,

one focused on outer space,

is taking notice of possible extraterrestrial activity

on Earth.

NARRATOR: In recent years, more and more pilots

are coming forward

to say that unidentified aerial phenomena

pose a serious risk to the flying public.

The Federal Aviation Administration, however,

continues to downplay the danger.

DOLAN: The FAA is

all about flight safety,

and yet, they don’t accept UFO or UAP reports from civilians.

The FAA is essentially telling you, civilian,

"I don’t care what you’ve encountered,

"and we don’t have to keep statistics on it,

"and we, therefore,

"don’t have to do anything about this impossible phenomenon,

which we don’t know what we could do."

The FAA does not want civilians reporting UFOs

because they don’t want the public stirring the pot.

This is something that could, in theory,

become actionable through FOIA requests, for example.

You can have a civilian saying, "I’d like to know

how many civilians are reporting UFOs to the FAA."

And then what do they do?

How many thousands of reports

are they going to be releasing?

They don’t want to get into that at all.

HENRY: I think it goes to this idea,

not of air traffic safety,

but not wanting to alarm the public.

NARRATOR: But now that the U.S. government

is paying serious attention

to UAP encounters reported by military pilots,

at least one agency is ready to listen

to civilian pilots as well,

and to the surprise of many,

it is America’s top space agency:

NASA.

In October 2022,

NASA assembled a team

of 16 scientists and experts

for a first-of-its-kind investigation

into unidentified aerial phenomena.

In order to collect new data,

the space agency also announced

it is taking over management

of the Aviation Safety Reporting System,

or ASRS,

a public service website that encourages pilots

to submit anonymous reports

regarding UAP sightings.

NASA has something now called

the Aviation Safety Reporting System.

And this is a mechanism

whereby pilots can report

UFO sightings anonymously, if they choose.

And it says on the website, this is non-punitive.

"We will not come after you for this.

There’s no comeback, just make your report."

HENRY: It suggests to me that there’s something else out there.

NASA knows about it,

and they want to know more about it.

And so they are, sort of, surreptitiously saying,

"We’ll listen to your story now.

"We’re collecting a database now

of what is happening in our skies,"

and so that is why I think NASA

is ultimately taking the lead on this.

POPE: People are saying, why NASA?

Why not the FAA? Does it perhaps tie in

with the fact that NASA is now studying UFOs?

Or is it maybe an indication, an intriguing clue

that a lot of the incidents of most import

happen in the real upper atmosphere,

where we are going into space. I-I don’t know,

but that’s... in a sense, that’s not the point.

The point is we now have this receptive environment

into which pilots can finally

speak out about the UFOs

that they are seeing on a very frequent basis.

NARRATOR: As far as ancient astronaut theorists are concerned,

encouraging commercial pilots to come forward

with their stories may finally provide critical proof

that civilian aircraft do, in fact,

encounter UAPs in our skies.

HANKS: There’s a deep history of UFO sightings.

And the obvious threat to aviation

is becoming more and more prevalent.

We have to start taking these reports

incredibly seriously because

pilots, crews and passengers could be at risk.

DELGADO: I challenge anybody to take anything you have

and put it out there. Don’t hesitate,

because maybe you’re gonna open the door

to-to bigger and better things for mankind.

NARRATOR: As more civilian pilots come forward

to report their encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena,

will it be revealed that such incidents

occur far more often than we would ever imagine?

And if so, could bringing

these incidents to light also bring us one step closer

to learning the truth about just

who, or what,

has been occupying our airspace

for thousands of years?

Perhaps one day soon,

the strange craft in our skies

will descend to Earth,

and when they do, we will know for certain

that we are not alone.

CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS