Mystery UFO spotted by pilot near Jeffreys Bay

IT was not a bird and it was certainly not a Kulula aircraft, but the mysterious sighting of a green unidentified flying object (UFO) offshore of Jeffreys Bay on Monday night has left many people scratching their heads.

And while the sighting of UFOs by civilians on the ground are not uncommon, the 9.30pm sighting of the green object by a pilot, who was airborne at the time, immedi- ately caught the attention of air traffic control authorities and resulted in a sea rescue team being put on standby.

The National Sea Rescue Institute’s Station Six in Port Elizabeth said yesterday a Boeing 737 cargo aircraft captain and his copilot reported seeing what appeared to be a green object about nine nautical miles offshore of Jeffreys Bay.

The plane was flying from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth.

The object, its size unknown, zipped past the aircraft’s cockpit, climbing about 305m above the plane.

It then dropped towards Earth at high speed, again past the cockpit.

The sighting was reported to air traffic control at the Port Elizabeth International Airport, which requested the NSRI’s assistance to investigate the possibility that an aircraft or water craft might be in difficulty.

NSRI Station Six commander Ian Gray said he spoke to the pilot who saw the object.

“He definitely saw something, but we were unable to figure out what it was,” he said.

“We were trying to determine, for example, whether it had been a distress signal of some sort, but we ruled that out due to the height of the aircraft and the height the object climbed to, so it remains a mystery.”

Gray said the plane, which was at an altitude of about 1 000m, was descending on its approach to Port Elizabeth at the time.

Gray, who ruled out the possibility of the object having been a parachute flare, said having performed their duty in reporting the sighting, neither the pilots nor the company that employed them wanted to engage with the media.

Jeffreys Bay NSRI Station 37 commander Rieghard Janse van Rensburg said the matter had been monitored throughout the night, but the object had not been seen since.

He said there had been no reports of any craft or aircraft overdue or missing.

“Yes, we considered the possibility that it had something to do with the chokka boats,” he said.

“There were lots of them on the horizon at the time and if they were on the horizon, they would have been about eight to 10km out.

“But there were no reports from the boats and there was no chatter on their radios about any sightings or problems,” he said, also adding that the sighting remained a mystery.

South African website UFORSA carries a substantial list of reported UFO and strange light sightings in the Eastern Cape, and around the Bay in particular, over the years.