link greetings ats community, i wanted to pass on something my dad experienced several years ago in the hopes that perhaps others have experienced something similiar or know someone who has. i found the story quite interesting, and i hope you will too. background: my dad was a pilot with 30+ years of experience flying all manner of civilian, military, and commercial aircraft. he was a naturally humble and quiet individual--never given to boasting or exageration. like many pilots, he was wired to be logical, mathematical, and mechanical; he was also a supreme skeptic where all things supernatural and speculative are concerned. he preferred direct experience and scientific inquiry to wild tales. his story: one day he came back from a trip he flew (commercial flight) to mexico. over a beer, i casually asked him about his trip. he looked at me, cocked one eyebrow and replied, "i saw something i can't explain." this got my attention. on the layover, he and another pilot went out for dinner. walking back along the beach at night, they both noticed a distant light moving along a fixed vector at a constant speed. they kept watching it, and were wondering about distance and elevation, thinking perhaps it was either a satellite or a high-flying aircraft--nothing out of the ordinary. then it came to a complete stop, reversed direction 180 degrees, and whizzed off so fast it was out of sight in less than a second or two. so my first response was, "do you think it was a ufo?" again with the cocked eyebrow he said, "i don't want to use that word. all i will say is that what we witnessed completely and utterly defies all laws of aerodynamics that i'm familiar with. i'm not aware of any aircraft--military or otherwise--that can do that. it's beyond my abilities to explain; that's all i'm willing to say." to contrast this story, i will also say that one time we were watching a campy, early 80's fox program that was reporting on the us government harboring aliens. at one point in the story, they started talking about a particular installation in the mountains of nevada (not area 51) that's being used as a landing zone for ufo's. dad started laughing so hard i thought he was going to fall off the couch. he looked at me and said, "i know what they do there." i said, "and???" he replied, "i can't tell you that, but i can tell you they're not landing ufo's." total buzz kill. anyway, that's the story i wanted to relate in the hopes that others can add their own. thanks for reading.
a pilots experience
gandalf77