Revisiting UFO Sighting, Chicago O’Hare Airport 2006

In the UFO bookazine we’re working on, we’ve got a chapter on mass sightings. Here’s info on  one of the most credible.

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November 7, 2006 was a gray, overcast day in Chicago, with temps around fifty degrees. Around four p.m CST, a ramp employee at Chicago O’Hare International was pushing back United Airlines Flight 446 from Gate C17 and spotted a UFO about 1,500 feet overhead. The employee alerted the flight crew and someone on board reputedly snapped digital photos of the object.

The object was disc-shaped, a dark gray, metallic color,  about 22-28 feet across, and hovered over Gate C17 for at least five minutes before it accelerated at such an enormous speed that it literally punched a hole in the cloud cover so that blue sky was visible.  It was witnessed by pilots, mechanics,  and senior managers from United Airlines. Air traffic controllers had a conversation about the sighting, which was later released through a Freedom of Information request by the Chicago Tribune. Hundreds of ordinary citizens saw it. It was, after all, rush hour in Chicago.

Initially, the FAA was mum. And United Airlines denied that any of their employees had reported seeing the disc. Then, on New Year’s Day 2007, Chicago Tribune reporter Jon Hilkevitch, who covers transportation for the newspaper, ran a front page story about the sighting at O’Hare. His lead had come from Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center, who had received two written reports from witnesses at O’Hare and had posted them on the organization’s website.

Hilkevitch’s story garnered worldwide attention. He interviewed witnesses – credible witnesses, those who are trained to determine that an object is an airplane and not something else. And they were unanimous in their belief that the object they saw was not an airplane. They all said the disc was soundless, that it hovered over the United terminal for about five minutes,  and that when it shot away, it punched a hole in the sky.

He was approached by researchers from major universities, hungry for information who had been stonewalled by the government agencies. He had been asked to appear on every major news channel, the media was hungry for whatever he had to say.  In leaked footage before an interview on January 1, 2007 with the local CLTV news, Hilkevitch mentioned that United had now reversed their stance and admitted that employees had reported the sightings to them.

But the FAA was sticking to their explanation: It’s a weather phenomenon and they made it clear they wouldn’t investigate any further.

Major media outlets covered this story – MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN. Unfortunately, the guy we liked back then – Keith Olbermann – invited astronomer Derrick Pitts of the Franklin Institute to give his take on the event and Pitts basically wrote off the sightings to “holiday cheer.” Gary Tuchman of CNN interviewed “Joe,” a United Airlines employee whose face was shadowed. He said he had worked at O’Hare for awhile, described what he’d said, and stated it was not an airplane not like anything he had ever seen.

The problem, of course, is that none of the mainstream media boys knew how to approach this story.

Leslie Kean, journalist and author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Official Go on the Record, revisited the case in her book.  “The safety concerns of the United employees with regards to this incursion of restricted airspace were apparently of no concern to the FAA, which is tasked to protect our airspace and aircraft.”

In the video at the top of the post, Kean goes on to dismantle the FAA’s weather phenomenon theory. This woman was Budd Hopkins’ partner toward the end of his life and she knows her stuff. Her book is fascinating. And because she sticks to witnesses that the mainstream considers to be “reputable” – pilots, military personnel, aviation experts – it’s difficult to discount her basic premise: “In the meantime, to many observers of these patterns of denial, the official dereliction of duty regarding credible UFO reports remains almost as incomprehensible as the flying discs themselves.”

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Every time I thought I found a video of this sighting, I received a message that the video had been removed by You Tube. I ran across one photo taken from Olbermann’s brief mention of this event, but it’s not too clear. So, in the end, we are left with more questions. And my question is this: If you’re going to hover above one of this country’s busiest airports, why not just land? It’s an airport, dude. Air traffic control will guide you in.