A remarkably similar incident occurred over the Sonoran Desert three years ago. On February 24, 2018, within minutes of each other, two pilots flying different aircraft — a Phoenix Air Group Learjet and an American Airlines commercial flight — both reported passing a mysterious object, according to audio recordings released by the Federal Aviation Administration to the Phoenix New Times several weeks later.
“Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?” the Learjet pilot asked an air traffic controller. “Negative,” replied the tower.
In November 9, 2018, a British Airways pilot flying over Ireland reported seeing “a very bright light that disappeared at very high speed,” reported The Guardian. A Virgin Airlines pilot confirmed seeing it, too: “Multiple objects following the same sort of trajectory – very bright from where we were.”
In April 2019 the U.S. Navy announced it was modifying how pilots reported UFO sightings in favor of a more data-driven approach, telling Politico that there had been “a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years.”
The next month, five Navy pilots told the New York Times that they had frequently seen unidentified flying objects that looked like white Tic Tacs or spinning tops off the Eastern seaboard from Virginia to Florida between 2014 and 2015. The objects, they said, reached hypersonic speeds and heights of 30,000 feet without any visible engine or exhaust trails.
One 10-year veteran, Lieutenant Ryan Graves, said he saw these objects on a daily basis. “These things would be out there all day,” Graves told the Times. “With the speeds we observed, 12 hours in the air is 11 hours longer than we’d expect.”