Private Company holds Canada’s Most Compelling UFO Data

Nav Canada is sitting on 25 years of UFO evidence from pilots and the military.

A private company holds some of Canada’s most compelling UFO data—and it has no interest in sharing it. From air traffic control towers to radar installations, Nav Canada

By Daniel Otis Vice 7-29-21

directs thousands of flights per day. That makes the company the first line of contact when professional pilots spot UFOs in Canadian airspace, like on the morning of Oct. 21, 2005, when Nav Canada staff "received reports from four aircraft flight crews of a shiny silver object over Toronto."

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Mysterious UFO Hinders U.S. Space Probe's Signals?

A mysterious glowing object hovering near Canberra Airport while the U.S. Mariner space probe was taking pictures of mars has baffled experts in Canberra. Air traffic control officers and other experts aircraft observers said they spotted the object Thursday.

By Atlantic City Press 7-16-1965

Six members of the traffic control tower crew said it hung suspended at about 5000 ft for 40 minutes. When the sun glinted off it, it became clearly visible, they said. It disappeared when an air force plane was sent out to identify it.

Experts are now wondering of it was a coincidence that the object was sighted shortly before nearby Tidninbilla tracking station was scheduled to pick up Mariner signals. The station had unusual difficulty in locking on to Mariner at the same time.

[...]

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Helicopter Pilot Reports UFO Near Las Vegas | AUDIO

Around 9pm local time on Saturday, March 16th, 2019, an air ambulance helicopter was flying roughly 15 miles west of central Last Vegas when something odd caught his aided eye. During an exchange with an air traffic controller, the pilot of

By Tyler Rogoway The Drive 3-20-19

Mercy Air 21, an Agusta 119 Koala helicopter, noted spotting an unidentified object some distance from his position and only he was likely able to see it in the darkness as he was wearing night vision goggles (NVGs).

[...]

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Pilots and Crew Adamant about UFO Incident That Made World-Wide Headlines

Crew remember the day UFO was spotted over Kaikōura 40 years on

It was New Year's Day, 1979, when the world awoke to the news that strange lights had been spotted by six people on a plane off the New Zealand's South Island.

By www.nzherald.co.nz 12-15-18

Was it a UFO? No, said the skeptics. It was Venus, it was squid boats, it was radar returns from a field of cabbages.

But 40 years later, the two pilots and four passengers are adamant it was none of the above and are frustrated at being unable to find answers.

[...]

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Three UFOs Encountered By Six Passenger Planes Simultaneously | VIDEO – CHILE

Due to the objects' movements, one of the flights had to 

detour some 20 miles off its course to insure passenger safety.

Six airliners in flight reported three objects whose movement suggests the possibility of their being unidentified flying objects. The mysterious event took place last May, but it was

By Inexplicata 10-14-18

discussed again only a few months ago, as the conversations between the pilots aboard became known.

The airliners were on their scheduled runs with nothing to report until a LAN-Chile airliner reported the presence of some lights near a control point known as Livor.

Shortly after, a pilot for the COPA airline confirmed it with a photograph, capturing 3 shiny unknown objects. A total of five LAN-Chile flights and one COPA flight pointed out, almost simultaneously, the sighting of three unidentified objects seen by pilots and those at the control post located 380 kilometers east of Antofagasta.

CEIFAC - Center for Anomalous Phenomena Research of Chile - published a video with the aviators' recordings. Due to the objects' movements, one of the flights had to detour some 20 miles off its course to insure passenger safety.

The pilots' voices say it all.

COPA 174: We have lights on the left and one is fading away. Affirmative, it appears to be at our same altitude. It wasn't at Livor, because the lights are there. No traffic is reported and we don't know what it is. One light just disappeared, there's only one left.

LAN 639: Santiago, Lan Chile 639 ¿Could you indicate the identification of the traffic ahead of us?

ATC (Air Traffic Controller): The traffic ahead is Lan Per 2473

LAN 639: 2473...ehhh, look at it (...)

LAN 2473: 2473 is go.

LAN 639: Position downward. Apparently over the sea. Could you also identify another light?

LAN 2473: Look sharp. We have another light in view, approximately at our 4 o'clock. Where there were two [lights] there's now only one.

LAN 79: Affirmative. I can see it clearly, a little more to the south of (...) at sea level. A very small light, appearing and disappearing.

LAN 2473: Exactly.

COPA 174: Copa 174 to Livor, 340 and we now have 3 lights. We are to the right of Livor 340 and the lights are to our left, approximately at our 10 o'clock. Lights are moving and increasing and diminishing intensity. In fact, we're turning right as they appear to be approaching.

After these initial events, the control tower decided to contact the Oceanic Air Traffic Controller, in charge of ascertaining the traffic of craft flying over the sea, beyond the reach of ground based radar.

ATC: Good morning. Oceanic

ATC: Good morning.

ATC: You have a note there with UFOs in the Livor block. Oceanic

ATC: Yes, it's full of UFOs.

ATC: Seriously? Oceanic

ATC: Of course! That's why the Copa detoured so much. Lan 639 and 2473 also saw them.

ATC: Ha,ha! That's great!

Minutes later, other flights would witness the same three lights.

LAN 501: Santiago, Lan Chile 501, holding position at 08 11, flight level 370, estimating Livor at 08 32, Sulna next. We have that light at our 1 o'clock around the Livor block.

COPA 174: What an odd phenomenon. Now we have 3 lights shaped like a triangle.

LAN 577: Santiago Lan Chile 577, Livor position at 08 34. Sulna next at 08 12. Livor next at 08 34. We will advise Livor.

ATC: Lan Chile 646 Oceanic?

LAN 501: Lan Chile 501, and there it is, the third light appeared.

LAN 577: Yes, some 60 miles from Livor and we also confirm (...) yes, between 2 and 3. Could be some
2000 feet below at a distance of some 20 or 30 miles.

LAN 501: Affirmative, we have them now almost a 3 o'clock. One's brighter than the other, and they are two lights.

The control tower chose to advise another aeronautical authority of these events.

ATC: Good morning sir. This is the Oceanic Control Center in Santiago.

COA: Good morning.

ATC: Good morning, there's a rather strange situation in the Livor sector. There are some 5 or 6 aircraft in the Live for Lima 780 air corridor reporting a movement of lights. Two, four, up to four lights in that sector, to the east. To the west of the Livor sector, at their own level or lower. The situation is ongoing. Three aircraft have reported it. In fact, an aircraft detoured 20 miles to avoid them. Altitude is approximately thirty two thousand. Now there are two traffic coming along the same corridor from the United States and are flying over the sector. They also have them in sight at 2 or 3 o'clock, over the sea.

COA: In the Livor sector?

ATC: Of course, and there is no traffic. We have our own traffic controlled. But we cannot see the lights maneuvering there on radar.
The phenomenon continued for about half an hour. ATC made the decision to advise COA "to avoid any situations."

LAN CHILE 501: We have lights at our 4 o'clock at that position.

According to CEIFAC, one of the first hypotheses put forth for the event was that the lights belonged to seagoing vessels in the area "arising from changes in air density that created a light refraction, causing the optical illusion of being over the sea."

However, the organization dismissed this given that the lights, theoretically, appeared to move intelligently and form a triangle. Furthermore, had it been a consequence of light refraction, the reflection would have been still.

* Source: PLANETA UFO and La Semana

* Translation © 2018 S. Corrales, IHU with thanks to Guillermo Giménez and La Semana

The early morning of May 7, 2018, strange lights were reported by several flights in the Livor airspace, located several miles west of the Antofagasta coasts. One of the pilots of the Copa flight to Panama, managed to photograph the lights even, had to make an emergency maneuver to avoid any unforeseen. Research done by the group CEIFAC Antofagasta in conjunction with CEIFAC Temuko, since May 2018

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OREGON UFO EVENT: Air Traffic Control Audio Tapes Released via FOIA Request

FOIA Strikes Again

Remember that riveting opening sequence in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” when air traffic controllers stared at their boards as airline pilots barely avoided colliding with something nobody wanted to talk about afterwards? A drama that unfolded over America’s northwest corridor in the early evening of Oct. 24, 2017, wasn’t quite that Hollywood. But whatever it was, the thing was flying. It had no transponder but got caught on radar. Then it erased itself and vanished from ATC screens. Immediately after that, at least three airline pilots reported seeing it. Jet fighters scrambled; by time they

By Billy Cox De Void 2-16-18

got airborne, whatever it was vanished for good, and the whole sequence probably left a few people who had to deal with it wondering if it was worth the effort.

We know all this thanks to some masterful work from Tyler Rogoway, a military aviation reporter at a non-UFO website called The War Zone. Armed with voluminous details harvested from a Freedom of Information Act request, Rogoway broke the story last November. And the updated results are so cool, De Void anticipates a Congressional suspension of FOIA laws any day now.

On Thursday, Rogoway posted audiotaped real-time chatter from eyewitnesses and official sources. It begins with the detection of an unknown flying object by Oakland Center air traffic control. It popped onto its screens at 37,000 feet, and for more than an hour, the speeding bogey drew swivels from both the Federal Aviation Administration and North American Aerospace Defense Command. It streaked for several hundred miles over northern California and Oregon, northbound. It ended when F-15s from the 142nd Fighter Wing out of Portland were dispatched on a fool’s errand to identify what at least one civilian pilot described as a big white unmarked aircraft, with few additional details.

Three months later, Rogoway has augmented his early reporting with a fascinating narrative presented in four separate videos, some syncing radar maps with recorded participant dialogue. The confusion among FAA operators is unambiguous: “You know that target south of the boundary there, that 0027 code moving very fast at 37,000?” “Yeah, look at that thing.” “Yeah, that’s, uh, crazy.” “Hmm, um, and you don’t have anything on him, huh?” “I got nothing.” “Well, we’ll look.”

Oblivious to requests for identification, the UFO merges into existing air traffic lanes and no longer expresses itself in radar pingbacks. But northbound airline pilots report seeing a distant white somethingorother that paces and maybe passes them, even as it resembles thin air to radar beacons. Although this potentially dangerous behavior fails to trip the planes’ Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems, it does alert a picket fence of other acronyms – DEN (the Domestic Events Network) and WADS (the Western Air Defense Sector, also nicknamed Bigfoot). Somewhere along the way, a command goes out to put F-15s in the sky to get some military eyes on the intruder. When an Alaska 439 pilot requests new info on the bogey, an ATC operator says it may have gone into “stealth mode or something.”

The F-15s hunted for the UFO “with the most capable air-to-air radar set in the world (AN/APG-63VC) and Sniper advanced targeting pods for long-range visual identification,” Rogoway states in his November report. “Their pilots are some of the best in the world and are highly trained in the homeland air defense mission. The fact that they ‘didn’t find anything’ is surprising to say the least. Maybe this was due to the nature of the aircraft being searched for, or the possibility that they launched long after it was first sighted, or that we simply aren’t being told the whole story.”

Rogoway’s FOIAs also produced an after-action audio gem. In this segment, an unnamed Seattle Center ATC Manager In Charge of Operations reaches out to airline pilots and FAA officials to figure out what just happened. All spoken names, phone numbers and emails are literally beeped out; but then, curious stretches of silence punctuate some of those interviews.

We also get a peek into procedural tensions during an exchange between Seattle and the FAA Air Traffic Security Coordinator. Among other things, FAA wants to know who asked for jet-fighter support. Seattle says Oakland sounded the first alert and, as the UFO entered another coverage zone, Oakland told Seattle to call WADS. Seattle said he notified WADS, but he didn’t ask for air support. FAA reminds Seattle that a “request for military assistance has to come through FAA headquarters.” Again, Seattle tells FAA he never made such a request.

FAA: “I explicitly said over the line that headquarters was not in conference with requesting military assistance at that time because I was on the DEN … I had no radar, had no target, I had nothing –” Seattle: “Yeah, we had nothing, either.” FAA: “—from anybody. So I would not send the fighters to go up and, y’know, toodle around and –” Seattle: “Right, flying around. ‘Cause we don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

Afterwards, sounding slightly chastened, Seattle calls Oakland to compare notes. Oakland has Seattle’s back: “But there was definitely something out there.” Seattle: “There was definitely something there, there’s no question, because United 612, it was … off his 3 o’clock, and about 5 to 10 miles for about a hundred miles … so what we’re trying is to reach those pilots of all those aircraft to see if they can write us a little a report about what they saw …”

Oakland: “Our radar did pick up an intruder target coming in at a high speed right toward the southwest …” Seattle: “Southbound? Not northbound?” Oakland: “Southbound. And then it did an abrupt maneuver and just took off northbound. And we’re like, what? He was southbound, now he’s northbound. Weird …”

A new weapon system going out for a test spin? Hey, what if it was North Korean? They do sneaky secret stuff, right? Unfortunately, the FOIA material doesn’t get us anywhere close to an answer. The last audio clip finds Seattle talking with an official with the FAA’s Safety and Quality Assurance Group. She calls the incident “potentially significant,” says it’s “a weird enough thing that there is not a set procedure,” and “It’s not often we hear about an unknown guy up at that altitude.”

Maybe, as Skeptic James McGaha would reassure us, the mystery would solved by now if only the pilots and radar monitors had been astronomers. Anyhow, great reporting. Well done. Stay on it.

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UPDATE: F-15's Scrambled in Pursuit of UFO; Radar & Audio Data Released via FOIA Request | VIDEO

Last November, The War Zone posted an exclusive story detailing a bizarre incident involving an unidentified aircraft that transited the skies of the Pacific Northwest in the early evening of October 25th, 2017. What started as a radar target moving at very high speed over

By Tyler Rogoway www.thedrive.com 2-20-18

Northern California turned into a series of eyewitness accounts made by nearby airline pilots traveling northward over Oregon. Even F-15 fighters were launched to intercept the mysterious intruder that quickly became invisible to radar.

Now, through the Freedom of Information Act, we present what could be one of the most insightful instances of official documentation surrounding such an encounter that had already been confirmed to have occurred by both the FAA and the USAF. These materials include fascinating audio recordings of radio transmissions and phone calls made as the incident was unfolding, as well as pilot interviews, and conversations between FAA officials made in the aftermath of the highly peculiar incident.

[...]

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US Air Force Confirms, Unidentified Aircraft Flew Through US Skies; F-15C Interceptor Fighters Were Scrambled

THE US Air Force admits it. Something strange flew through US skies, startling flyers and spurring the launch of jets.

On October 25, an unidentified aircraft was seen flying — in broad daylight — among the airliners in one of the United States’ heavily trafficked air corridors in the skies above Oregon.

By Jamie Seidel www.news.com.au 11-16-17

It had no submitted flight plan. It had no identification transponder active. Nor was it transmitting collision avoidance signals.

Air traffic control stations were reportedly having difficulty following it on radar.

[...]

At first it sounded like a typical example of an aircraft suffering communications failure.

But then came news, via Reddit, that US air force F-15C interceptor fighters had been launched in response to the sightings.

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F-15's Scrambled Over Mystery Aircraft

Something quite out of the ordinary occurred in the skies over Oregon on October 25th, 2017. A mystery aircraft was flying in daylight hours among the steady stream of airliners that traverse from south to north, between locales in California and Nevada and cities

By Tyler Rogoway www.thedrive.com 11-15-17

like Portland and Seattle and beyond. The incident began, at least as best we can tell, around 4:30pm near the California-Oregon border and resulted in multiple pilot eyewitnesses, recorded air traffic control audio, and eventual confirmations from both the FAA and North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) that it did indeed occur.

[...]

NORAD's reply was quick and clear. An incident involving multiple airline crews, air traffic control, and F-15Cs from the 142nd Fighter Wing based out of Portland did occur. According to the limited information NORAD supplied, airliner pilots were asked by FAA air traffic controllers to help track and possibly identify a "white aircraft" traveling in the flightlevels nearby—roughly between 35,000 and 40,000 feet based on the radio recordings. NORAD also said that the incident did result in F-15s from Portland being scrambled to investigate, but by the time they got up and "looked around" the mystery aircraft couldn't be found.

[...]

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UFO Reported To Air Traffic Control at Port Elizabeth | SOUTH AFRICA

At approximately 21h30, on Monday night, the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) in Port Elizabeth was requested by Air Traffic Control to investigate the sighting of an unidentified flying object - commonly called UFO.

"A Boeing 737 cargo aircraft Captain and Co-Pilot, flying from Cape Town International Airport to Port Elizabeth International Airport, reported seeing what appeared to be a green object increasing in altitude past the cockpit of their aeroplane reaching to about a thousand feet into clouds above them and then returning towards earth at high speed past the cockpit of the aeroplane," said NSRI spokesperson, Craig Lambinon. "The sighting was reported to Air Traffic Control at Port Elizabeth International Airport, who requested NSRI's assistance to investigate the possibility that an aircraft or craft may be in difficulty.

By www.rnews.co.za 12-13-16

[...]

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Spy Plane Disrupts Air Traffic Control Computers, Shuts Down LAX | VIDEO

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By Mike M. Ahlers
CNN
5-6-14

     (CNN) -- A very old spy plane and a very new computer system played pivotal roles in last week's computer glitch that temporarily paralyzed flight operations in southern California, officials tell CNN.

The problem involved a U-2 aircraft, the type famed for conducting reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

A Federal Aviation Administration computer system interpreted the U-2's flight path at a very high altitude as if it were flying in a much lower and more crowded airspace.

The computer -- which anticipates the flight path and looks for possible conflicts such as other aircraft or restricted airspace -- was overtaxed by the many flight changes the U-2 had plotted, officials said.

That work used much of the computer's memory and interrupted its other flight-processing functions, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said in a statement. . . .

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Air Traffic Control, UFOs and the FOIA

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By David Clarke drdavidclarke.co.uk 8-19-12

     Each month Air Traffic controllers receive reports of flying objects ‘that don’t conform to normal flight patterns’ the head of Britain’s National Air Traffic Control Services admitted on BBC Radio 4.

Towards the end of a general interview on the Today programme (17 August 2012), reporter Simon Jack took the opportunity to ask a question posed by his children who wanted to know ‘if you…or your staff have ever been unable to identify a flying object.’

Traditionally, NATS and Civil Aviation Authority officials prefer to avoid questions on UFOs like the plague, but on this occasion Chief Executive Richard Deakin was pressed for a Yes/No answer. His response, which you can listen to here, was:

“It’s a yes…not just in the UK but around the world, typically around one a month.’

But he quickly downplayed the significance of this admission by adding that ‘it’s not something that occupies a lot of my time.’

Simon Jack was surprised by Deakin’s statement as it appeared to suggest the ‘skies are buzzing with UFOs.’ But the head of NATS was not given the opportunity to explain the vast majority of these ‘flying objects’ turn out to be terrestrial aircraft that have strayed into busy airlanes, military aircraft, microlites, hot airballoons and a host of other routine hazards.

But a far more accurate litmus test of how frequent reports of ‘UFOs’ (or UAPs) by aircrew actually are can be found in the records kept by the Civil Aviation Authority, the government agency that employs NATS to run air traffic services in the UK.

As a private company NATS is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But I have received a series of interesting responses to FOIA requests for data on Mandatory Occurrence Reports (MORS) and Near-Miss investigations recorded by the CAA. The MORS scheme is for aircrew to report occurrences ‘which endangered or which, if not corrected, would have endangered an aircraft or its occupants’. Although not designed specifically to capture UFO data any sightings reported by UK aircrew – whether in UK airspace or elsewhere in the world – enters the CAA database and is subject to Freedom of Information requests.

MORs (see example at top of page) tend to be little more than one paragraph in length and simply summarise the incident, often without any obvious resolution. But in those cases where crews report a more serious near-miss (or airprox), an independent team of experts is called in to carry out a more detailed investigation. Possibly the best known example of an airprox involving an unidentified flying object was the near-miss reported by the captain and first officer of a Boeing 737 approaching Manchester Airport in January 1995. You can read Ian Ridpath’s account of this interesting case here.

The response to my most recent FOI requests to the CAA reveal that between December 2004 and October 2011 ten ‘mandatory occurrence’ reports were logged by the authority. One of these referred to the UFOs reported near Alderney in the Channel Islands by pilot Ray Bowyer in April 2007. Just two of the reports had led to separate air proximity inquiries by the UK Airprox Board (UKAB).*

This figure of ten suggests that Richard Deakin’s guesstimate of one per month refers to a larger body of sighting reports that never make it onto the CAA’s database, as we should expect the numbers of MORs to be nearer 80 for the six years ending in 2011. However, it is well known that aircrew and ATC controllers are reluctant to file UFO sighting reports because they wish to avoid publicity and others fear the effect it could have on their flying careers.

A determination to downplay UFOs and avoid being drawn on this issue appears to be endemic at the CAA and Ministry of Defence, as UFO files released at The National Archives have revealed. One senior MoD official, responsible for flight safety, even referred to the official attitude as “ostrich like” in a 1977 memo, writing that:

“If we do not look, it will go away. If it does not officially exist, I cannot get terribly worked up if someone sees one, in the busy airlanes over the Channel or anywhere else.” (UFOs – Flight Safety Considerations, TNA DEFE 71/33)

Possibly the most interesting revelation from my FOI requests is that the Civil Aviation Authority (and by default NATS) decided two years ago to continue collecting UFO reports made by aircrew and air traffic controllers, despite the MoD’s determination to shut down its own X-files.

The MOD closed its UFO desk and reporting facilities in December 2009. In January the RAF wrote to the Head of Aviation Directorate requesting that ‘any reports received by the Department of Transport or air control centres are not forwarded to MoD and that members of the public who make such reports are not encouraged to believe an investigation will take place.’

Members of the CAA Safety Regulation Group met at Gatwick airport to discuss the changes on 11 March 2010. According to a copy of the minutes I obtained (see extract below) there was a lengthy debate on the subject after which CAA decided to update its guidance to air traffic controllers on how to handle UFO reports in future.

Soon after this, a special instruction was issued to ATC centres that ‘UFO reports [should] no longer be forwarded to MoD for investigation’ but reports remained of interest to the CAA.

This was because ‘UFO reports have been used and continue to be used for issues related to flight safety…some UFOs eventually become Identified Flying Objects (IFOs) following investigation, therefore it is still a requirement for controllers either observing a UFO or receiving a report from aircrew to consider if the sighting has any flight safety significance.’

One outcome was the issue, on 1 July 2010, of a updated version of the 45-year-old guidance document appended to the Manual of Air Traffic Services covering reporting of UFOs by aircrew (see extract below):

Of significance is the fact that CAA have decided to remove two items from the reporting procedure that dates back to 1968. This relates to UFOs observed ‘through surveillance means’ (e.g. by radar only) and visual sightings reported by members of the public. From 2010 any reports originating from the general public have been forwarded by CAA to the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA).

This move shows that the CAA, like the MoD, has no interest in UFO reports from the public regardless of how credible they may be. It also has no interest in ‘UFOs’ observed on radar without visual corroboration, as long experience has shown the majority of these can be explained as atmospheric phenomena.

Recent MORs that have resulted in separate investigations by the UK Airprox board include (1) a sighting reported to ATC at Bristol Filton of an ‘unidentified object at 6000ft overhead’ at the same altitude, flying under the nose of the aircraft, on 21 February 2010. Nothing was seen on radar. This was assessed as a ‘conflict with an untraced object in Class D airspace’ by UKAB.

(2) a report by the crew of a MD 80 of an object that ‘looked like a parachute/hang-glider’ at FL170 over Lambourne, Berkshire, on 25 April 2010. Nothing was seen by other traffic in the area and the incident was assessed as ‘Conflict in Class A airspace with an untraced aircraft. No further CAA action possible.’

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