One of the airport witnesses did take a photo of the phenomenon, but is reluctant to make it public out of concern for his job, Davenport said. "So far, over almost two months, we've been unable to get that," he said.

Here's another message from a different mailbox:

---

Davenport may have "shot you down," but he sure missed a key fact: atmospheric phenomena tend not to stay in the same place. A vortex formed over a runway could certainly drift over terminal gates after being formed. That idea doesn't fit into his pre-conceived notion of what went on, so he ignored it.

When someone like this starts writing things like

"DECEMBER 15, 2006 UPDATE: NUFORC has an unconfirmed report from a journalist investigating the O'Hare Airport incident of Nov. 7 (see full details lower on page) that the FAA and the airline involved have declared that the incident did not occur. We strongly suspect a cover-up may be starting to form."

I start to think that the guy is drawing his curve and then plotting his points, as we used to say in Physics 101. Since he presupposes that UFOs (technically, "a flying thing that I can't identify") are necessarily alien spacecraft, he leaps to the conclusion that a cover-up must be occurring when things don't pan out. Since he already "knows" what's going on, the lack of evidence is just a cover-up. It's sad, really.

Another interesting point:

"One of the airport witnesses did take a photo of the phenomenon, but is reluctant to make it public out of concern for his job, Davenport said. 'So far, over almost two months, we've been unable to get that,' he said."

Alternative explanation: Witness reviews photo and realizes that it doesn't look like a flying device at all, and demurs instead of facing public embarrassment. Honestly, which is the more likely explanation? Occam's Razor (and General Relativity) suggest that there was no vehicle hovering over the gates, and that a group of people saw what they were told to see, or wanted to see. ("Hey Chet, look! It's a UFO!")

Despite the fact that his site declaims that he's after "objective" data, the man's an obvious partisan. There's never been a single shred of data to support the concept that extraterrestrial spacecraft are visiting the Earth, and lots of empirical data to suggest that they can't and aren't. In an age where camera-enabled mobile phones are practically ubiquitous, his site features almost nothing but crude hand-drawings and "depictions" (doctored photos) of events. What undoctored photographs there are turn out invariably to be out of focus...or strangely out of focus only where the purported "spaceships" are, even when taken by "professional photographers." I find that very suspicious.

I'm a huge fan of science fiction. I majored in computer science and minored in physics. I believe that life exists on other planets elsewhere in our own galaxy, and that some of it may even be intelligent as we define that term. I also believe that the speed of light represents an insuperable barrier which renders the scenario of constant visits from intelligent space travelers highly unlikely. Not impossible, mind you, but so unlikely as make the probability virtually zero during our lifetimes.

When I was five years old, I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I walked down the hallway, and turned into the bathroom, where I saw a snake on the floor. I started to panic. I couldn't go into the bathroom because of the snake, and I couldn't NOT go into the bathroom, because my bladder was very full. I finally ran to my mother's room and told her about the snake in the bathroom. She walked me back down the hallway and turned on the bathroom light. There was no snake. What I had seen was a curving shadow cast on the floor by something very close to the night light. Yet I knew there was a snake there. I acted upon that knowledge, even though I didn't bother to check for evidence beyond that first observation. I could have turned on the light, naturally, but I was convinced I didn't have to because I already knew there was a snake on the floor. I required nothing more than the conviction of a snake present to go into a panic.

In a similar fashion (but without the panic), Mr. Davenport is seeing snakes where there aren't any. Someone needs to turn the light on for him.

-- J. Brook Monroe

Grey Aerial Disk Reported by Chicago O'Hare
United Airlines Pilots and Mechanics

© 2006 by Linda Moulton Howe

" I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out
very clearly, and it definitely was not an (Earth) aircraft."
- United Airlines mechanic about Nov. 7, 2006, sighting



January 2, 2007 Chicago, Illinois - Reporter Jon Hilkevitch at the Chicago Tribune, reported yesterday: "A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport (above United Airlines Concourse Gate C17) for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon."

The date was nearly two months ago on November 7, 2006. The time was about 4:30 p.m. local time before sunset. A dozen eyewitnesses working for United Airlines, ranging from a manager to pilots to mechanics, all said the aerial object was dark gray metallic in color, clearly disk-shaped, made no sound, had no glowing lights, and remained motionless above Gate C17 for several minutes. Some witnesses said it looked like the disc was spinning. One United mechanic said, "I know that what I saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an (Earth) aircraft."

But no media coverage about this event surfaced until after the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for facts.

Jon Hilkevitch reported from his interviews with United employees who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

"Like United Airlines, the FAA originally told the Tribune that it had no information on the alleged UFO sighting. But the federal agency quickly reversed its position after the newspaper filed a Freedom of Information Act request. ...A United spokeswoman said there is no record of the UFO report. She said United officials do not recall discussion of any such incident.

"'There's nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents,' said United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy. 'I checked around. There's no record of anything.'

"The pilots of the United plane being directed back from Gate C17 also were notified by United personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground. The object was seen to suddenly accelerate straight up through the solid overcast skies, which the FAA reported had 1,900-foot cloud ceilings at the time.

"'It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky,' said one United employee. Witnesses said they had a hard time visually tracking the object as it streaked through the dense clouds, rising straight upward. It left behind an open hole of clear air in the cloud layer, the witnesses said, adding that the hole disappeared within a few minutes."

Regardless of the United and FAA denials, Hilkevitch reported that "some of the dozen United employees who saw the hovering disc said they were interviewed by United officials and instructed to write reports and draw pictures of what they observed, and that they were advised by United officials to refrain from speaking about what they saw."



Cloud Hole Mystery

The Chicago O'Hare sighting raises a question about the hole-punch cloud phenomenon reported and photographed occasionally. Are the cloud holes produced by rapidly moving discs from another world?


Mysterious cloud holes. Left: Stavely, Alberta, Canada.
Middle: Derbyshire, England. Right: Nashville, Tennessee.


January 12, 2004, hole punch cloud over Mobile, Alabama.
Image © 2004 by Joel Knain.

NASA reported about the Alabama hole punch cloud: "Such a hole, likely hundreds of meters across, was photographed from a driveway near Mobile, Alabama. Very unusual to see, hole-punch clouds like this are still the topic of meteorological speculation. A leading hypothesis holds that the hole-punch cloud is caused by falling ice-crystals. The ice-crystals could originate in a higher cloud or be facilitated by a passing airplane exhaust. If the air has just the right temperature and moisture content, the falling crystals will absorb water from the air and grow. For this to happen, the water must be so cold that all it needs is a surface to freeze on. The moisture lost from the air increases the evaporation rate from the cloud water droplets so they dissipate to form the hole. The now heavier ice crystals continue to fall and form the more tenuous wispy cloud-like virga seen inside and just below the hole. Water and ice from the virga evaporates before they reach the ground."



Was It Atmospheric Illusion?

FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth I. Cory said, "Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon. That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low cloud ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things. That's our take on it."