SIGHTING: FORT MYERS, FLORIDA (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"I hesitate to claim that what i saw was a ufo, and not an airplane. if it was an airplane, however it was far too quiet and in a place and at an altitude where it should not have been. however, i did not really give it much thought afterwards, until i recently read the account of bruce cornet, phd, a scientist at the lamont-doherty earth observatory in palisades, new york, who apparently was followed by a mysterious, black aircraft while on his way home from work one evening. i was sitting out in my lanai late one evening in december, 2016, around midnight, when i saw a very bright, white light rise slowly into the sky from somewhere behind my neighbor’s house, across the lake. i watched it, wondering what it could possibly be. it was absolutely silent, and i could see nothing about the object except for that single, bright, white light. it did not appear to be moving, other than slowly rising into the sky. but, i noticed that the higher it got, the dimmer the light became. since my binoculars were nearby in the kitchen, i quickly ran inside to get them and then ran out front to watch the mysterious object, which by now was high enough in the sky that i could no longer see it from the lanai. by the time i got outside the light was rising above the roof of my house. with the added magnification of the binoculars, i could now make out the red and green navigation lights on the wingtips and a flashing, white strobe light. an aircraft! it was coming directly towards me, flying from north to south, which explained why it at first appeared to be moving vertically. without the binoculars, the two bright landing lights not only obscured the navigation lights and the anti-collision strobe, but were placed close enough to each other to appear from a distance as a single light. i still could not hear it. it was only as it passed directly overhead that i could begin to hear a very faint, high-pitched whine, not the sound of jet engines throttled back, as i normally hear when an aircraft passes overhead in the landing pattern. the sound of a large jet on final approach is something that i have experienced many times, since the tee for the tenth hole at airport golf course in columbus, ohio, where i used to play, is located directly under the landing approach to runway 28 left and just across the road from the runway threshold. perhaps there was no sound because of a temperature inversion that blocked transmission of the sound to the ground. it was warm and the weather was clear, with little or no breeze. in any case, however, aircraft in the approach pattern to southwest florida international airport (rsw) do not fly directly over my house, as this one did. not ever. this plane was far too large to have been attempting a landing at page field (fmy), the local general aviation airport, but the landing pattern for that airport would take it far to the north, not over my house. nor, are aircraft in the landing pattern for either airport ever so low this far from the runway, about 10 miles as the crow flies from my house to rsw and 7 miles to fmy. and, the direction of travel of this aircraft would not have aligned it with a runway at either rsw or fmy. i can see aircraft in the landing pattern to rsw in the distance, approaching from out over the gulf of mexico, far to the west. why this particular airplane was approaching directly from the north and flying so low, i have no idea. i estimated its altitude as it passed overhead as only about 500 feet, far below faa restrictions. the only runway at southwest florida international airport is oriented southwest to northeast (24/6). without the use of my binoculars, i could easily have mistaken this aircraft for a ufo, at least until it was directly overhead. it was low enough that i soon lost sight of it behind the trees in my front yard. another interesting aspect was that the bottom of the fuselage was coppery-colored, not aluminum, but neither did it look like paint. but, was what i saw really an aircraft? i am a pilot and a retired air force reserve officer. my father was a career air force officer, and so i grew up on military bases and have been around aircraft of many types virtually all of my life. it certainly looked like a jet airliner to me, albeit an extremely quiet one and in a location and altitude where i have never before seen any aircraft other than the sheriff’s helicopter. dr. cornet reported that on the evening of 24 sep 1992, as he was driving home from work on i-87, he saw what appeared to him to be a boeing 707 jetliner flying to the right of his direction of travel, between the highway and bear mountain. he realized that the aircraft was lower than the top of the 300 foot mountain, and thought that it may be in trouble. it flashed its landing lights on and off, several times. by now, it was less than one mile distant. the time was about 1820 (6:20 pm) and the sun had not yet set, but was very low in the sky. dr. cornet noticed that the aircraft was painted completely black, and that it had no markings of any kind whatsoever on it. what made this aircraft really strange, however, is that dr. cornet could not see any engines mounted under the wings. after reading dr. cornet’s full account, it appears to me that what he saw that night might not have been an aircraft at all, but a ufo disguised to look like an aircraft. i do not remember whether or not what i saw last december had engines mounted beneath the wings, or not. if not, then it could have been a smaller, regional jet, such as a such as a dc-9 or an md-80 with the engines mounted on the fuselage, near the tail. dr. cornet’s full account can easily be found on the internet, since he has his own website. if there are any other accounts of a ufo masquerading as an airplane, i would be interested in learning of them. "