Almost 1000 people's flights were delayed for about 4 hours by a UFO a few weeks ago in China, and this mystery is as yet unsolved. Cool pics!
Six or more flights were grounded for about an hour by a UFO near Xiaoshan airport in Hangzhou, China on July 7th. It looks like a blimp to me.
UFOs shut down an airport in China's Zhejiang province and turned heads in a major city, but a renowned space expert says the strange lights in the night sky will likely turn out to be more identifiable flying objects.
Just days after the Xiaoshan Airport grounded flights due to bizarre lights, China's state-controlled news agency published photographs of a mysterious "diamond-shaped" object sighted over Chongqing, sparking speculation about extraterrestrial visitors.However UFO skeptic and space flight expert James Oberg told AOL News in an exclusive interview that he has a more terrestrial explanation -- military testing."I'm not surprised because of the level of confusion. In China, they do seem to have a lot of openness about what people see -- they're not always so open about the explanations, but that's not because the UFOs are interplanetary," Oberg told AOL News....
Shortly after the July 7 incident over the Xiaoshan Airport, spokesman Ruan Zhouchang confirmed to the media that "there was an unknown object seen in the skies over the airport. So, according to our regulations, we had to close the airspace. Aircraft movements were suspended from 8:45 p.m. to 9:41 p.m. ...
via China UFOs: Space Expert James Oberg Says Don't Jump to Conclusions.
An unidentified flying object (UFO) forced Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, China to cease operations on July 7. A flight crew preparing for descent first detected the object around 8:40 p.m. and notified the air traffic control department. Aviation authorities responded within minutes, grounding outbound flights and diverting inbound ones to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi. ... Fueling speculations further, Hangzhou residents released photos, taken in the afternoon before the delays, of a hovering object bathed in golden light and exhibiting a comet-like tail. Less than an hour before the Xiaoshan airport shut down, residents said they also saw a flying object emitting red and white rays of light.Resident Ma Shijun was taking a nighttime stroll with his wife when he saw the object.
"I felt a beam of light over my head. Looking up, I saw a streak of bright, white light flying across the sky, so I picked up the camera and took the photo. The time was 8:26 p.m. However, whether the object was a plane, or whether it was Xiaoshan Airport's UFO, I don't have a clear answer," Ma told the Xinhua news agency.
The photos taken by Hangzhou residents may be unrelated to the UFO that shut down Xiaoshan Airport. According to Hangzhou meteorological authorities, residents in the afternoon probably saw light reflecting off of an airplane. - abcnews
Link includes video, news report of the event.
“An unidentified flying object (UFO) disrupted air traffic over Zhejiang’s provincial capital Hangzhou late on Wednesday [July 7], the municipal government said on Thursday. Xiaoshan Airport was closed after the UFO was detected at around 9 pm, and some flights were rerouted …
A source with knowledge of the matter, however, told China Daily on Thursday that authorities had learned what the UFO was after an investigation. But it was not the proper time to publicly disclose the information because there was a military connection, he said, adding that an official explanation is expected to be given on Friday.”
Image submitted to Earthfiles.com from an American-Chinese businessman with contacts in Hangzhou, China, who has asked to remain anonymous. “The photo is real per my trusted employee. Taken between 8 PM and 9:30 PM on July 7, 2010, within 25 kilometers of Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou. The buildings match the area. The lights out so early in evening is very common as power costs more in China than USA. Please do not use my name.”
I'm still looking for descriptions of the object's behavior. Did it float in place? Take off at high speed? Disappear? Change shape?
11 comments:
This is a repost of a comment I got on my blog after posting this exact same story...
"The first three photos are long exposures of helicoptors — and all were online before the airport closure, so they cannot be of that UFO.
http://forgetomori.com/2010/ufos/ufo-over-hangzhou-china-a-long-expos/ "
A serious correction: about Robert Hastings, it should read: "... and others, tells he WAS duped: "Reporter duped by UFO debunkers." (Not how he duped anyone - that's the job of debunkers.) Sorry, again
Thanks Ann, good updates. I'd like to read as many first hand accounts as there are about this sighting.
Bill Chalker, theozfiles.blogspot.com, has been following the events after sighting at the Chinese airport: "Chinese Airport UFO incident is not an 'Alien Flying Saucer' according to combined Beijing Shanghai UFO investigation" (July 24, 2010)
He is also "rather surprised by the extent of the worldwide coverage given to the July 7 2010 Hangzhou Xiaoshan airport 'UFO' shutdown incident. So much inaccurate reporting and speculation on this story has spawned spurious links, fake photos and poorly devised 'explanations.'"
As it turns a Mr. Ma took the photo which was claimed have been the unknown object seen at the airport the day it was closed. It appears, however, the photo is probably only a time-lapsed photo of a conventional aircraft, on the night of the airport closing.
http://www.guanggou.net/?p=3037
And, this photo may have nothing to do with the closing of the airport.
Chalker found out that the Beijing UFO Research Organisation and the Shanghai UFO Research group did a joint investigation on July 14 and 15. And, on July 24 concluded "there was no evidence that the incident was caused by an alien UFO or flying saucer." But, how they came that conclusion, however preposterous it might seem to the skeptic, isn't clear. I suppose no one told the researchers they saw little green men.
We already have news reports interviewing an official spokesman from the airport who said, pilots, airline passengers and air traffic controllers saw an unknown object, which by definition, is a UFO. While the debunker, James Oberg, can so easily dismiss the observational acuity of pilots, it would be more difficult to dismiss the same in air traffic controllers.
It seems to me the job of the investigative team is to find out what the unknown object was, if possible. This is no slight issue: the unknown was visible enough to enough people to shut down an airport.
Chalker goes on to say that this investigation found that sighting was not confirmed on radar screens, but "there were 'blind spots' in the airport radar observations, and therefore private, military aircraft and other activities could not be ruled out as the source of the events that lead to the airport shutdown."
A curious statement. A "blind spot" may not be related to an unknown object, as in "alien" craft, but it may be related to unknown "military aircraft."
Apparently this investigation didn't work with or interview the eyewitnesses of the unknown object: pilots, airline passengers and air traffic controllers.
http://theozfiles.blogspot.com/2010/07/chinese-airport-ufo-incident-is-not.html
Thanks for following this and for the report Ann. Interesting details. Any descriptions available of what was seen?
Bill Chalker's report (theozfiles, above) is confirmed by Peoples Daily (July 26, 2010), which also said the investigators concluded "No evidence shows that the UFO is associated with an extraterrestrial flying saucer, ..." which means, I guess, no little green men kicked the investigators in the shins and yelled, "hey, we're down here!" So, apparently, this lack of evidence is evidence it wasn't "an extraterrestrial flying saucer." However, radar "blind spots," for this investigative team, meant the UFO may have been unknown flying military craft.
The importance of this event may be understood by the fact that the airport that was shutdown is Xiaoshan International, a major international airport in China, with direct flights to Amsterdam, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore and regional routes to Hong Kong and Macau. The airport services the city of Hangzhou, one of China's largest cities and a major growing industrial center. Xiaoshan International is no minor rural wind-sock flying, dirt-road run-way by any stretch of the imagination.
So, why would a military craft, from whatever country, cause a most unique event and interfere with the air traffic of a major international airport to the extent of causing it to shutdown?
Great link and info, Ann. I'm thinking that if I was a flying billionaire, I'd pay someone to build me something fast and safe that looked like a UFO. I suspect that there are a number of custom flying machines that make it into the UFO files.
Yeah, I suppose a rich guy could build a UFO-like flying machine, but if he were to do that, it seems to me, he more than likely try to capitalize on the idea and we would have heard something about it. Are there good human-made flying machines that look like UFOs? I know there has been a lot experimental trials and the like, but were there ones that were relatively safe, as in stable while in flight?
Another tidbit about the uniqueness of this event in China, which seems to contradict Strong's report, is that "It was the first time an airport in China has been shut down on such short notice due to a UFO, said a staff member with the CAAC [Civil Aviation Administration of China] of East China, who declined to be named." If billionaires do cause air traffic havoc in China, as Strong indicates, it was not as in this case. This source doesn't say, however, it was the first time an airport was shutdown by a UFO in China. But, "even a fire balloon needs to get the authority's permission before lifting off."
Source: Extraordinary UFO sighting over China on July 2010:
http://www.savevid.com/video/extraordinary-ufo-sighting-over-china-on-july-2010.html
This is the Peoples' Daily (August 11, 2010) and its the best report so far. Although it was described by one investigator as a "plane," other investigations describe it as a special kind of flying craft (i.e. a UFO?):
"After a month of research, an expert told reporters that a UFO spotted in Hangzhou on July 7 might be a special purpose aircraft, such as a plane [sic], ... According to Wang Sichao, a researcher from the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the UFO that encroached on the airspace of Xiaoshan airport in Hangzhou flew at a height of one kilometer from the ground. It might be some special aircraft, such as a plane, or some rapid, noiseless or low-noise aircraft, reported by Chinanews.com.cn. ... [On July 7th] Around 8:40 p.m., crew members on two flights that were about to land found a UFO was hovering in the air, and they notified the air traffic control center. A few minutes later, air control ordered all flights to stop taking off and those flights that were heading to Xiaoshan airport were instructed to fly to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi to land. A total of 18 flights were affected this time. Wang also believes that the UFO was unlikely to be some typical domestic plane or overseas plane. Also, it could not be cruise missile or rocket fragments."
Expert: UFO in Hangzhou might be special aircraft
16:33, August 11, 2010
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90782/90872/7101386.html
What Oberg mean by pilots having to assume any pattern they see is a danger. Is that, if they see a dark, shrouded moving object coming closer, they have to assume it's solid, and dangerous, and something to be avoided. If they're wrong, and it's just, say a wisp of storm cloud, then no harm done, but if it turns out to be a threat, which could run from anything solid to another aircraft, spacecraft, whatever, then they fly right into it and kill everyone onboard. They have to interpret all meaningful patterns as threats. It's this aspect of the psychology of pilots which would cause them to interpret patterns in the noise as UFOs, possibly among the greatest technological, and airborne, threat that a pilot imagine.
Paul J. Nelson, if "pilots having to assume any pattern they see is a danger ... and something to be avoided", more often than not the passengers of their planes are in for a hell of a bumpy ride.
No, Oberg, I feel is wrong, having some experience in the field. I feel pilots are in fact one of the best observers of aerial phenomena. Oberg is merely a skeptic, if not debunker, that puts on with a friendly and presumably "rational," if not "scientific," face for the media.
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By the way, as for post #15, it's wrong. As it turned out the object photographed was lights of the camera, not a UFO.
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