And it hits me, Oh my gosh, this is a triangle. You
know, there's explanation for everything that occurred in the randallshom far As concident.
It doesn't involve aliens at all. It was completely silent. It comes right
over our heads. Classic. He's also really stunning into clearly. He turned
over to my father and held his hand, and he looked in his eyes
and said, We're not alone. Welcome to podcast UFO for our live show.
During the show, feel free to participate live in our chat room,
and don't forget to like us on our very active Facebook page. Hello and
welcome to the show. I'm Martin willishire host and welcome tonight. We have
a great guest. Unfortunately, Alejandro had to take someone to the airport and
couldn't make the show. However, we did make an attempt to prerecord earlier.
We did talk a little bit, so I actually want to talk about
the conversation a little bit before I bring on our guests. And I'm really
excited about our guests. I myself have had some interests in the aviation world
in the past, and so I'm excited to talk to Todd. Doctor Todd
Curtis, and he has his PhD and aviation risk assessment and so he also
has an interest in UFOs and has looked into the topic and it's going to
be really exciting. I can't wait to talk to him. So Alejandro,
basically, when he and I were talking earlier today, he was talking basically
about the Bob Lazar movie. He got a sneak preview in that movie,
and I, you know, I mentioned that I if I had to bet
on one side the other whether the Bob Lazar story was true or not all
the way through, I'd be more apt to doubt it than I would to
think that it's those things really happen. Now, I'm not saying I do
have an in mind. I'm going to keep my mind open and I eventually
will be watching the movie myself, because he said that this film really makes
you ask a lot more questions, and he thinks it's he said, he
was kind of like feeling the way I do. But he's kind of put
it in his gray basket right now, trying to decide for sure whether you
know there's really something to it or not. One of the things that you
know, I'm not going to give really a spoiler or alert, because I
haven't seen it myself. The trailer is great, by the way, anyone
can find that on Google. But you know, as far as what happens
in the film that he says will add some to the credibility is basically that
there are independent people saying that they saw Bob Lazzar in Area fifty one.
They worked with him, one says, but he remains an honor and those
people are going on the record with their names as well. What also came
up was the person supposedly that gave him his clearance talks anonymously, voice altered
and all that. So I always have a little bit of trouble those type
of interviews, whether to actually believe them or not. So we're live.
Anyone can watch the show every Tuesday at six to eight pm Eastern Standard time.
It's on YouTube. You can listen or watch live, and it's also
on the Dark Matter Digital Network. People can watch it over there, and
it's always up on YouTube, and do check out the website. We do
get some blogs in there. We also have a real active Facebook page and
you can like that and every day it's updated. I try to update it
on the weekends, but it's not always done on the weekends, but anyway,
so I am getting ready to welcome our guest, and Todd Curtis,
welcome to the show. Well thanks for having me, and yes, then
thank you for being here. And we kind of met in a kind of
a roundabout way. Actually, I want to give the thanks to Ray Stanford
because you actually contacted me and you were looking to buy Rai's book, so
you listened to the show and that's how it all started. And I said,
hey, wait a minute, you are an air safety guy. Let's
talk about that. And I think it's fascinating that you have an interest in
UFOs because it's, you know, it's kind of a taboo subject in the
aviation field. And I guess up, I want you to talk about your
background, but before we actually go there, can you also talk about have
you had any ridicule because of your interest in UFOs very minor, primarily through
the things I've published on my website in the past. I've actually had a
interview with Leslie Hayne after a book came out about UFOs and government documents in
Generals This is I think twenty fourteen, and also Richard Hayes of Camp I
interviewed him for one of my podcasts and there was just a minor pushback,
but nothing major. I've actually Richard's a nice, a great guy. I'm
at him down in North Carolina several years ago and a real interesting guy.
I really enjoyed meeting him and talking to him. But he won't come on
my show. And the reason, you know, he's very clear about it.
He says, you know, you have the word UFO and the title
of your show, and I don't want to be associated with anything to do
with UFOs. And that kind of gives you an idea of how the name
is sort of tarnished or maybe overused and abused because you know, really it
means a unidentified flying object, but people do associate it with, you know,
aliens. You mentioned the word UFO. It's just like saying flying saucers.
You know, people are going to be critical of the word and people
interested in the field because they think you're talking it's got to be aliens.
What are your thoughts on all that, Well, it's quite simple from my
perspective, which is my backgrounds in aviation safety started off some years ago,
oh my goodness, back in the eighties as a flight test engineer in the
Air Force, and I transitioned into the civilian side of things, working aviation
safety, and that was at blowing for quite a few years during the development
of the Triple seven. Was the main part of my time there, and
that's why I really developed an interest in looking at all sorts of angles with
respect of things that could be a threat to the aircraft, either on the
ground or in the sky. And when it came to unknowns in the sky,
well, clearly some of them are unknown phenomena that are weather related and
can be scientifically studied, but when they first are noticed by people, it
might engender all sorts of fear. I remember reading a story quite a few
years ago about jets and sprites, which are basically upper atmospheric lightning. They'd
been observed by pilots decades ago. But it's a kind of thing where these
pilots, primarily military, had reported these sings. Even though these were related
to be found scientifically valid, this was something that had nothing to do with
flying the airplane and had nothing to do with their mission, and reporting that
could put them on out of flight status. So even if there's nothing alien
about it, reporting something that's unusual that has nothing to do with the mission,
could put your career in jeopardy. Same for the civilian world. Airline
pilots are some of the most well respected and also scrutinized professions out there.
Any number of things that they do and their personal life could come back to
haunt them in their professional life, and reporting on things in the sky that
again had nothing to do with flying the airplane, have nothing to do with
the operation of the aircraft, has nothing to do At the bottom line,
it's not their interests in their interests to do so. Would you, if
you had to guess or theorize, would you say that it's a very small
percentage of commercial pilots that will actually report it identified flying object. I would
say it's advantagtionally small, primarily because there's no formal process that the FA or
the Department of Defense or anyone else has out there that says we are an
official agency dealing with aviation matters. If you see something that's unusual, that
could be a vehicle that is not made by Boeing or Airbus and is interesting
and unusual, please report it to us. There's nothing like that. There
are some ways that pilots or anyone else in society can report things to an
official government body, but not explicitly for unknown phenomena such as this. You've
mentioned Richard Haynes and in our cap so that is one organization. Thank goodness,
it's there. You know, there is a place for them to go.
But one thing, and I've had, I've had I'm trying to remember
the main person there right now on this show. It was actually first the
YouTube show. He was on that and we're friends. I just lost his
name right now, but anyway, great guy, and he was willing to
be on the show even though it was, you know, a show about
UFOs. But I just wondered, do they contact anyone with the reports or
are those reports accessible, like to say, for instance, all of a
sudden, you know the government may have an interest in a case. Do
they actually contact NARCAP? Are you aware of that? I'm not aware of
any official government outreach to organizations like NARCAP or the National UFO Reporting Center or
other privately run organizations that collect colaid and analyze unknown data, UFO data,
unknown aerial phenomena data, call it what you will. I know, if
no government outreach to do that I see. I'm sort of surprised a little
bit because you know, there's there's been a number of years there's been speculation
that Moufon there's some type of connection there with Moufon, and I know it's
conspiratorial, but um, you know, there have been some links between the
government and Moufon. You know, Bob Bigelow. There's also, for instance,
Ray Stanford, who was on the show, we talked one time about,
um, there was some shell company that was funding a Moufon event that
actually had ties to the government. So it's it's it's pretty interesting, and
I don't really know other than getting data, you know, why they would
be doing anything like that. Well, who knows? All the mysterious ways
of government works, and government, in my opinion, isn't some monolithic entity.
There are all sorts of institutions, organizations, individuals who are their own
agendas. Some of them are consistent with a major policy issues at the high
level. Others could be personal interests. So the likelihood that some agent of
government or some part of government had some funding going to private organizations like that
perfectly plausible. And again keep in mind that organizations like NARCAP move on etc.
They're private entities, they're not publicly traded. They don't have a requirement
to have a full disclosure of their finances like a publicly traded company, and
as a private company, they can have all sorts of things that are not
necessarily neferious, but certainly not open to the public. Right now, how
about your airsafe dot com? Have you yourself been contacted by anyone about the
UFO topic at all? Or earthly? That just the only that never happens,
except the occasional email that might have commented on one or two pieces of
content I had, either on the podcast on the website itself. But as
far as outreach from government, the only thing I can say indirectly looking at
the logs of data and traffic, that comes to Yes, there are some
domain names that are related to large aviation organizations and government organizations that do visit
my website. But I keep in mind that the vast majority of my website
deals with airline aviation safety and security events, only small event with the things
that could be related to UFO. So could some of that traffic be related
to That could be, but I don't have that level of detailed knowledge of
who did what when? What do you think about I've talked to some skeptics
that they say that an airline pilot is no better of an observer than anyone
else. I disagree with that. What is your thoughts? Well, if
the airline pilot is observing a birthday party of a four year old, yes,
they'd be no different than the average person. But when it comes to
looking at things in the sky, we're talking a completely different situation here.
We're talking people who professionally study the sky. They understand at least a little
bit about meteorology. They know something about the stars, what stars look like.
It could be an aircraft if you're not looking carefully. Satellites, for
example, the ISS which if it's flying over you, if you didn't know
any better, you'd mistake it for an aircraft. They know what things look
like from above from below. They know what looks normal with respect to other
traffic. They've seen traffic. Airline pilots, they've seen traffic at their altitude
above and below for years. Because flying to and fro around the world,
there are various air routes that other airliners take, so they would on a
regular basis see aircraft of all types military and civilian. So to say that
they would not be able to recognize something that's out of the ordinary, be
it a natural phenomenon or something it looks like a controlled flight of some sort
of vehicle. That's absurd. Airline pilots are a cut above compared to most
other people. Have you, yourself, ever had in any type of sighting.
There's only one time where I could say that I had a sighting of
something that just didn't make any sense to me. And this was in Seattle.
And I say this because I happened to talk to a co worker a
couple days later. He saw the same event. He was about twenty miles
south of me. What this was was a very high flying, extremely low,
slow moving, and very very stable contrail. I've been looking at contrails
all my life, and I've seen them from large aircraft, small aircraft.
This didn't behave like any contrail i'd seen before. I'm not saying it was
an unusual vehicle. It just looked to be a lot slower than usual.
And I thought, okay, maybe to you two, But from where it
was in Seattle, I was looking to the northwest, more or less toward
the northeast. Use the northwest corner of the state of Washington, and I'm
thinking, I don't have any flight activity that's over there that would make sense.
There is a Needal air station and would be island north of my position.
I would be between where this contral was and where I was looking at
it from. But nothing at Whidbey Island was that kind of aircraft. I
stood there and looked at it for twenty thirty minutes. There's so much so
that I said, I'm going to see if this thing moves. I'm gonna
look at a distant object here, which was like a radio tower. I'm
going to see if this contril moves in any way, shape or form with
this radio tower in the foreground. And it did, but extremely slowly.
And again I had a colleague. I was at blowing at the time.
I had a colleague of mine. I talked him about He said, oh,
yeah, I saw that too, And I thought, if you saw
this roughly the same angle to the horizon, And he was like twenty miles
south of me. This thing had to be a fairly decent distance away.
Was it over Canada? Was it over the Pacific? I couldn't tell you.
I've never seen that kind of contril before. Since Wow, that's interesting.
Now we talked earlier about the term ufo. Is that a taboo?
I think you mentioned in one of your emails to me. It's kind of
a word you didn't really let leave your lips when you were talking to certain
people. So that's right. Yeah. I was actually interviewed for a History
Channel show some years ago about UFO events related to airliners, including the japan
Airlines at Cargo seven four to seven in Alaska in the nineteen eighties, and
I was trying the best my ability to not say the word UFO during the
interview because I thought, Okay, if you're gonna put only seven seconds of
me out of the show and put it out somewhere and saying, hey,
this is what Todd Curs believes. If I had the words UFO coming out
of my mouth, that would be one thing. Now, if they saw
the entire show, they could see it in context. But knowing a little
bit about how the media works, the juiciest sound but is the one that
ends up everywhere. So I was very careful in that show. That's right,
That's right, So we will. I do want to bring up and
talk about the ja L sixteen twenty eight case, because that's a fascinating that's
one of the I think it's one of the all time great cases out there.
But before we do that, we're going to be going to break in
a short bit. And also I wanted to ask you, with your background
and your website and your stature so to speak, do you have do people
take you seriously? Like if you actually wanted to enquire about an event,
I mean, can you do you have an ability to contact like for instance,
the Irish you know, the incident that happened, to have the ability
to contact an organization and ask about the research or something on that. I
typically don't do that for a couple of reasons. First, and you know
I didn't talk about this ahead of time with you, which which are basically
giving an advertisement for my first book, which was called A Understanding Aviation Safety
Data. And I wrote this based on my work when I was in graduate
school of m I. T. And plus my work at Boing. How
do I go about finding things? There are so much out there that is
in the open waiting be picked over that all you have to do is,
in my opinion, know how to systematically ask and answer the question. Look
for those sources of data that are reputable enough you can address those questions.
So the Irish Aviation Authority, for instance, they might be investigating event that
happened a few weeks ago. Well, if a reporter comes out, I'm
sure it'll be available somewhere. So rather than calling someone at the authority,
I'll just search their website, search various for on the internet and if someone
says, hey, the report just got published, here's the URL. That's
my way of getting the information. Okay. So you kind of go about
it the same way that anybody could. You don't try to use your status,
so to speak, in any type of way a special way. Now
and again this brings up something even further back. I mentioned how it was
an Air Force flight test engineer. Well, my last assignment the Air Force
was at the National Security Agency and the National Cryptologic School. And one of
the things I learned from being in and around the intelligence community is real simple.
Most of the really really, really really good nation is out there in
the open already. It's more a question of knowing how to look and word
to look. You don't need the fancy satellites or James Bond or any of
that nonsense. There's plenty of information out there. Yeah, and us,
you know, I wouldn't think we're too far apart in age. You're probably
quite a bit younger than me. But we have seen the times, going
back to the analog days where everything was you know, papers and files and
all that, and now everything is available online. Have you ever, in
any of the work that you've done in regards to air safety use for you
for your freedom of information requests for any documents. That's a good question.
I actually wrote about how to use for you in my first book, but
I haven't myself had to resort to that because typically, because I know enough
institutions in the industry, if I really needed something really obscure, simply go
after that particular database or that particular library, or I might even have somebody
in the industry who'll give me a heads up on it. But actively going
after foy information, I haven't had to do that. Interesting. Wow.
Okay, so we are ready to go to break. So my guest this
evening is Todd Curtis, and this is Martin Willis with podcast UFO, and
we will be right back right after these messages. Well, let's see I'm
just going to look quickly through. There's there's people posting some questions up on
the chat room here, and someone there was no filming actually of the let's
talk a little bit about the Ireland, and we can talk about that during
the regular show too, but there was no filming of that in particular that
I heard about it. I know there was a you know, there's a
voice recording, but there's no access to any No one took any no pilot
took a pictures or film or anything of that. As far as you know
and my knowledge, there was no radar trace of that either. No radar
trace, and which is interesting and you probably know this already, but that's
not uncommon for UFOs, even when people see large structured vehicles. Well,
let me be more specific. When it comes to radars used for air traffic
control, they're using primarily transponders to get information from the aircraft, right,
rather than primary radar return off the skin paint, the kind of thing the
military radar would use. So you could have something fly directly in the line
of sight of an air traffic control radar if there's no transponder on may not
see that aircraft at all. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that
the transponder was their main source. I thought it was always, you know,
the typical radar. So yeah, interesting, And there's a lot of
talk about, you know, vehicles. You know, there is no transponder
in these these vehicles when they see them. That's interesting. So we have
you know, we have three minutes or so left in this break or just
about that. And we didn't really talk much about your background and what gets
you started in the aviation field. You want to talk a little bit about
that again, we have a couple of minutes left. Oh, certainly.
I grew up in the sixties and early seventies in Texas, and back then
this was during the height of the Apollo program, actually the latter part of
the Gemini program and the Apollo program. I remember watching Gemini launches when I
was in elementary school. I would have been like first second grade, because
we're talking about sixty five or so, and like most other people in the
country, I was glued to the television when the space shots happened, and
the astronauts in Texas were right up there with the Dallas Cowboys as far as
how much chef fame they had, so the fact and also to NASA's credit,
the Public Affairs Office was very very generous. I'm some a little kid
nine, ten, twelve years old writing in longhand to the Public Affairs Office
would send me tons of stuff, mission reports, photographs, I mean all
kinds of good stuff. You know. I had jeors full of that stuff
growing up. So that was one of the reasons I thought, hey,
this might be something interesting. I also had an uncle who was living in
California who was an aerospace business as an engineer, and another uncle who worked
at Douglas on the assembly line. So I didn't think that aviation is something
that was, you know, beyond the realm. It's like, hey,
I got a couple of uncles doing this, and I know that there's a
business out there and there might still be some things, even though the space
programs sort of like wound down big time by the time I got to college,
and I decided to keep on with my interests in aviation. Learn how
to fly when I was in college and grad school, and it took me
several years because I kept running out of money. And when I went into
the Air Force, it was explicitly to work in one of the aviation research
offices, ended up going to Edwards, was there for a couple of years
and worked on the F sixteen Lantern program, which was some of the early
iterations of infrared targeting and navigation systems. And this was again eighty four eighty
five time frame, and the stuff they had was working great under the conditions
of the Mahabi Desert. It's like if they had to do this in the
folda gap over in Europe for you know, the warsaw pack coming over the
hill, this isn't going to work at all. Of course, a few
years later, the first time this technology got his big time was in the
first Goal for and the whole world saw those pictures and it's like, wow,
this is amazing stuff. So I hate to say this, but that
was some of the greatest marketing ever for that kind of technology on military aircraft.
A race. We're about ready to go back, right, Yeah,
we're oh fifty five seconds, I'll kill my goodness. Wow, that's the
law. How so, yeah, you're gonna count down all the way from
there. So all right, the timer going on? That so interesting And
was that hard to get an education in aviation? No, it wasn't hard
at all. Again, they went off to engineering school and I ended up
going to Princeton for engineering school, and I went into electrical engineering because I
knew enough about where things were going. Man aviation already had a big retrenchment
a few years before, and I thought, well, gee, if I
were to go in aviation in a discipline where I could actually go into another
business if I had to, you know, what engineering would I follow?
And I ended up doing electrical statistical analysis, signal processing, that kind of
thing. All right, welcome back, my guest this evening is doctor Todd
Curtis, and we're talking aviation, and we are aviation in UFOs and really
enjoying it. And I mentioned that, you know, before the we went
into break that I wanted to talk more about the j A L sixteen twenty
eight case. Unfortunately, what happened to the pilot of that situation. And
so for the person that's not aware of that whole case in particular, are
you able to walk us through exactly what you know about it? Well,
I'm going from my rapidly fading memory, but this was in the early nineteen
eighties. It was a cargo flight jail cargo flight in the Alaskan airspace north
of Anchorage, and the crew noticed several anomalous objects or a phenomena out there,
including what looked like a UFO that was several times larger than the seven
forty seven itself. And they now only saw this with their as they radioed
into air traffic control, and they also got in touch with the military I
believe out of Almend Air Force Base, so you had several physical eyes on
it as well as radar tracking of this, and the FAY had radar tapes
of this, and of course they had a lot of transcripts of what went
on. And subsequent to that event was meeting apparently involving several branches of government
other than the FAA, and a lot of this was supposed to be confiscated
and kept quiet, but one of the FA managers who was there there was
some of the data that was not required to be taken away I believe by
the FBI might be wrong on that, and he eventually kept that for himself
and released that to the public later on. So the public only got wind
of this with respect to detailed information about what was done on the FA side
because this FA manager decided to keep the data and then release it when it
was convenient and forced. The captain of this aircraft was put on non flying
duties for several years before we can go back to flying again, strictly because
of his role in reporting this and being open and honest about it. Yeah,
that's right. And I know that actually n our cap actually got him
reposted in his position. Actually they fought for him and actually was able to
get him back in the U and the left seat. So that uh,
that case though, I consider it, um, you know, one of
the best, like I said, just because of all all the evidence at
least to that actually really happening, and the description of the vehicle, the
size and how it was tracking them. It was following them, and they
actually they did a circle. I believe they did a circle when they were
told to, and the thing was basically following around this big three hundred and
sixty degree circle they were. They were doing U shaped like a walnut and
with smaller vehicles coming out of it. Um, you know, just a
real fascinating case. And I know that I've heard that the pilot um did
not want to talk about it afterwards, and I think that's a shame that.
Um, you know, when someone is threatened and their job is threatened.
But he's probably retired now, are possibly retired now, I don't know.
Oh that was over thirty thirty years ago, so I'm pretty sure he
was a senior pilot. He'd be retired by now. Yeah, And I
wonder if that's something he ever, you know, wants to talk about,
if anyone's ever tried to reach him. It may be difficult to do,
but still and also one of the things that has occurred to me about this
case. I wonder in Japan if this case has talked about much there,
or if it's even talked about it at all. That's a good question.
I have never even explored that. Yeah. Yeah, So I have some
questions that came in from a listener to the show named Carrie and Let's see.
Um, so I'll start out with this one here. Has the Has
there ever been any analysis of the total number of UFOs sightings reported to the
FA and NARCAP and if so, would you know the differences between the two.
I can speak to the FA part of that. I've been looking at
FA publications of all types for various issues over the years, from laser strikes
aircraft, bird strikes aircraft, etc. Never come across anything that's even remotely
associated with UFO sightings or unusual, unexplained phenomena that may have affected the aircraft
systems or their air crew behavior. Never seen anything like that. As for
narcap's analysis, I've delved a little bit into what they've done, but I'm
not totally familiar with the full range of things they've published over the years.
Now I will I want to address that because obviously there has been many issues
that have happened. But you're saying that does the FAA. Would you believe
the FAA just plane does not want to hear about them, or would they
just tell the pilot. Is it possible to tell the pilot use some other
source of reporting if you feel like you have to report this, Well,
certainly when it comes reporting, they would say that, because there isn't,
to my knowledge, any clear program in place to report those kinds of events.
I mentioned bird strikes and laser strikes aircraft. I mentioned those two specifically
because I've been involved in the bird strike a world for a while and I
analyze laser strikes a good bit because there was a very good database of that
on the FA website, and in my years working with the FA or going
to the Department of Transportation and their research facilities, there's all kinds reports out
there, but I've never come across anything that deals with anything remotely like UFOs.
Well, all right, let's talk about for instance, we just talked
about the ja L sixteen twenty eight. Obviously that there was a report,
but it kind of fell short there. And then there's the hair Gate C
seventeen incident that happened, and I know that there was an attempt to report
that to the FAA. What happens in a situation like that, Well,
this was a situation for those who are unfamiliar with it, where you basically
have some sort of view aircraft, drowne whatever it was, it really doesn't
matter. Violating the airspace under one of the most critical pieces of aviation infrastructure
in the United States. You have something flying over the terminals of O'Hare that's
interrupting air traffic. That's a hazard aviation. So there is no two ways
about it. That was clearly something that was a straight up violation of FA
regulations. And if there was a pilot associated with that vehicle, that pilot
would have been sanctioned, might have had their license yank orbit. Besides that,
even if you're not talking about the FA you're talking about something that could
be a threat to the infrastructure of aviation. That's something that is responsible,
believe the FBI, some other sort of federal law enforcement, or for that
matter, of Chicago law enforcement. In spite of that, I have seen
nothing in the way of any kind of report, any kind of acknowledgement even
that this was being looked at with any seriousness by the responsible parties who should
have been doing this. Now. I don't want to make a joke about
this, but if isis claimed the next day, hey, that was us
flying in that drone. We disguised it so it looked like a UFL so
we can fool you guys next time around, there would have been a completely
different response. But there was no responsible party that came forward. There was
no evidence of any responsible party being associated with it. It was a true
unknown as to the source and motivation of whatever or whomever was flying that vehicle,
assuming it was a physical vehicle, and that let's say a projection of
some sort. Right, also that it went up and am Piers, the
perfect hole in the cloud. I don't even know how something would even do
that, you know, maybe the high rate of speed or something that's just
an unusual situation, but enough people saw that to report it as well.
Now it's also a technological situation here. At the time, I believe it
was two thousand and six, this is before YouTube. This is before everyone
and their brother had a smartphone with them. If that were to happen today,
it's very likely it would be ten dozens of people who would have not
only been my witness to it, but would have had still photographs and video
of this. And no matter what kind of suppression any level of government will
try to do, it will be out there in the wild within minutes.
There'll be no way to stop information, or at least knowledge of this event,
no way to stop that from going out to the world. You know,
I agree. I agree, but not wholeheartedly because I can understand that
a lot of times when people have a citing like something like the unexplained,
the last thing in the world they think of as their phone or camera,
but not everyone like, for instance, to fight. If I saw something
like that, I'd be grabbing it from my phone but it's only because I
do what I do, and I had a sighting myself. But I got
to tell you when I had my sighting, my phone was not anywhere near
me. But still I never even had never even occurred to me because I
was in awe and just thinking, what the heck is that? And I
think, you know, there's a lot of talk about this subject, and
I'm glad you brought it up, because you know, the skeptics. I
see it a lot out there and postings and stuff. Why aren't there you
know, tons and tons of videos and pictures of UFOs. And I know
my iPhone if I try to take something at night, it even though it's
an iPhone eight, it does a terrible job. But still, you know,
that's a big question. If there's so many iPhones out there, how
come we're not seeing more UFOs and you know a lot of it. You
know, I try to take a picture of a blimp a few years ago.
You know how slow they moved, and I couldn't even get my phone
out in time before it was over Boston Common. I couldn't even get my
phone out in time to take a picture of it. So you know,
it just maybe flashback to a nineteen eighty one when I took a picture of
a blimp with a pinhole camera of all things. But that's another story for
another day. You know, this is an ageism sort of common. I'm
about to make people of a certain age they may not have their phones at
the ready. People who are younger than that certain age have the phones out
all the time, to the point that annoys the heck out of me.
I've seen more than a couple of, you know, emergency evacuation from aircraft
videos where the person, a young person, would have the phone in their
hand looking back at them running. Oh my gosh, the phone's on fire.
It's like, dude, wait until you're safety away before you turn the
camera on. So again, certain ages of people are more apt to whip
out their phone for any reason or no reason at all. So in the
future, I think we'll have more videos. Yeah, and you know,
going back to pilots, Okay, I've been in the cockpit a number of
times for myself. Um, not not flying, but I mean on a
jet. Um I had. I had a short time where I was involved
in the aviation field. Um, so I flew and um you can see
like so far out in front of you. Um. You know, on
a good clear day, it's amazing. Um. How much of a visual
capability you have up in the cockpit. Um, and you're covering a lot
of ground. It seems like you're going slow because you're just you know,
forty thousand feet or thereabouts. Um. But um, do you think there's
a lot of sightings from pilots? Would you? Would you guess that there's
a lot of sightings. I would say that there are a lot of sightings
of things that are unexplained, unexplainable. It could be something that might be
natural meteors, et cetera. And it could be other things military aircraft being
tested. And again talking about let me talk a little bit about what you
just said. You're sort of minimizing your experience needation. You were a certified
aviation professional, you know, had to go through formal training, had to
deal with the passengers in the airline business as a flight attendant. So you're
an insider. So that sets as far as how well you can see in
the aircraft. Add another flashback. Yeah, maybe it's an age thing,
and keep getting flashbacks. I was flying a glider over Princeton. They had
a glider club there back in the seventies when I was a student. It
was a very clear day. It was about fifteen hundred feet. The instructor
said, Todd, I've got the controls. Look to the left and right.
What do you see Over my left shoulder. I could see in New
York. I could see the statue of the Arizona Narrows World Trade Center,
Empire State Building. Look over on the other side, I could see downtown
Philadelphia. And I'm in a little glider fifteen hundred feet above central New Jersey
and I could see on either side of the state. So if you're at
thirty thousand feet, clear night, no clouds for miles, you can imagine
how far you can see. Right. Yeah, I haven't. I've never
talked about the fact that I was. Yes, indeed, I was a
flight attendant for I took a sabbatical from the antique auction business for about a
year and a half and I decided to try out to be a flight attendant.
I was with pan AM three and UH and it was and I was
trained for for many weeks and really enjoyed. I loved it. Actually,
I was actually in Guantanamo Bay when the the Taliban were being brought in the
first Taliban We're being brought in. And I was there with a government contract
and and our plane actually had a fuel spill and we were stuck there for
hours. It was very interesting while they circled around with the Taliban prisoners.
UM. So that's going back to UH And I was also during you know,
nine to eleven. UM, I was not. I was at home
when that happened. But the whole airline industry completely changed. And sure you
saw that as well. Oh, most definitely. Yeah, precautions, take
the plane apart, look for razor cutters, all that stuff. It was
really really interesting. So there I'm out of the closet. I was a
flight of tenor for bodyguard, and I got to travel. I did it
for travel, and boy did I travel. I had a lot of fun,
a lot of island fun and a lot of fun. You mentioned earlier
about wild pilots or anyone reports something that they hadn't. I think there are
many, many, many good photographs and videos of unexplained phenomena out there,
But for the average person, are they going to take the steps necessary to
put it out there, even to put something on YouTube which is fairly simple.
It means you not only have to have the photograph or the video,
you have to have a YouTube account, you have to upload it, and
frankly, most people are lazy. They might be content to just show it
to their friends. Here you love, look what I saw and taking it
no further than that. And if it is on YouTube. Speaking on YouTube
and video, there's so much fake stuff out there from everyone's final cut pro
or whatever kind of thing of fake UFO pictures on the internet that just having
a video that shows what seems to be UFO, my first thought would be,
Okay, this photoshop or is this real? I don't think it's one
video. Yeah, it's not going to get any better, but keep going.
Yeah, well, if it's one person doing it, it's one thing.
But if you have multiple people doing it from different angles, different kinds
of cameras, film and a motion picture, and you have eyewitness testimon if
you have a whole bunch of things together throwing their radar a return from the
FAA, now we're talking. Sure, you know one or two of those
might be fake, but they can't all be fake. So if you have
some event that's witnessed by a whole bunch of people and recorded in various ways
by a whole bunch of people, stands a better chance of rising above the
usual noise level. Yes, there's actually been something on the dome. I
don't know if you ever saw that ufou that recording that was recorded by several
people. But they planned it, you know, that was all. It
was all planned in the time. That was one of the bomb of the
rock. Yeah. Uh, and that's a real good one too, I
mean, but so there are situations where there are you know, people in
cahoots. But you're right, anything on YouTube it's kind of you know,
goes opposite the justice system. It has to be guilty to proven innocent basically
when you're looking on YouTube, because there's a there's a lot of debris out
there. There's a lot of like you said, CGI and hoaxing. In
the in the world of aviation safety, there's all sorts of events that happened
that are extremely rare. But the thing is they might be extremely rare,
but they're not one of the kind if something happens every five or ten million
flights, after a while, they'd be enough evidence. Hey, we have
four or five cases here now, we're seeing a pattern. If you see
but one of the kind thing, let's say the j EL event, and
you never see that again, how can you develop a pattern out of that.
So one of the difficulties for extremely rare events that are also unreported or
underreported is that you may not have a population of events or case studies to
make any sort of reasonable judgment off of them. And this goes forget about
UFOs, even when it comes to a risk to the aviation safety. This
is something I did more than a couple of times making the case that something
is a problem that should be addressed. Not only do you have to recognize
that happens and have to get some sort of population of events happening, then
you have to deal with the bureaucracy of the situation. If you're going to
change how airplanes are produced, let's say, you probably have to change the
regulations at some point. To change the regulations, you just can't have one
person screaming and how learn from the top of the hill. You have to
have consensus within the industry that this is an issue they should be addressed.
There should be a systematic way of doing so. And once we figure this
out, we should all agree that we will enforce this to the letter around
the world. So it's hard enough when it comes to something that is recognizable
as being a hazard to people on board an aircraft. It's even harder if
it's something that is not recognized as a hazard, may not have any direct
impact on the physical operation of the aircraft, may have an effect on how
people respond. Again, that's more of a training issue. But even if
it were that, let's say, seeing something unusual cause air crews to behave
that Normally, they're using procedures off the cuff, they're making maneuvers with the
aircraft. They shouldn't. Well in many cases, since this is something that
may not hit the airplane or damage the airplane, the response might be a
look, we already had procedures in place for what if you see something that's
not at your altitude but in the vicinity, should you take any kind of
evasive action? Yes? Or Now, well, if you shouldn't have taken
evasive action, if this were an airplane and you took avasive action as you
didn't think it was an airplane, were you doing the right thing by taking
matters into your own hands, or should you have stayed with procedure. So
yeah, it's a it's not a simple issue, and how that issue gets
resolved depends on the situation. Yeah, I understand all that. And also
I know that you know, crashes and things that have happened, you know,
they kind of have to be dissected into how you know, and a
lot of you know, a lot of times it's a multiple of a human
error, you know, one thing after another, not following procedure or doing
something, paying attention to the wrong thing, or whatever it is. I've
watched some of your your videos and how you've you've looked into that, which
I think is fascinating too. We're going to be going to break here shortly.
But as far as people redirecting an airline around something that they are seeing,
um, you know, an unidentified object, are there any cases that
you can think of were that situation happened When it comes to civil aviation and
airliners, I can't think of anything where there was some sort of action taken
that merited being reported. For example, if you depart from your assigned altitude
against ATC recommendations, that's something I would be reportable and it may even lead
to some sort of reprimand and if that has ever happened with respect to an
unknown object. I can easily see a situation where someone violated their altitude for
whatever reason, and they would rather take the punishment and say I did this
because I wasn't paying attention. They'd rather do that than say I did this
because I saw a giant walnuts shaped thing five times the size of a seven
forty seven Come on right at me. Yeah, yeah, you know,
I think we can talk a little bit about the recent Irish incident. We
talked briefly about it, but there has as far as you know. Do
you think that's going to be looked into seriously? It's hard to know.
There was a report that the Irish Aviation Authority, their version of the FA
was going to make some sort of report or look into it. What that
will entail that remains to be seen. And again, this was an event
where there were several aircraft that reported seeing something, but to my knowledge,
none of those aircraft did anything out of the ordinary. They didn't have to
deviate from their flight plan, they didn't have to do any sort of invasive
maneuver. There was no effect on the aircraft systems. It was just something
highly unusual that was seen by multiple pilots reported air traffic control. And one
part of the thing that would be looked into, and it should be seriously
looked into, was this some sort of military activity or flight test activity,
let's say, from a manufacturer who's testing out a new design. That happens
all the time. But just because it's a new design, just because it's
a proprietary or secret thing, doesn't mean you don't follow the rules. Right.
You can't just go Willie Milly into the airlines and run your aircraft in
front of airliners without telling the fa what you're going to do. And you
know, there's I'm sure the procedures in place for secret aircraft to do their
thing without revealing to the FAA what exactly that aircraft is. Now, if
those procedures aren't being followed, well, then someone should be should be dinged
for it. Now, you just mentioned airlanes. Are they like do they
just completely cover like to save the United States for instance, or are they
in specific areas? I know there's places that have to be avoided more or
less, but do they just spread? I know they're different altitudes and all
that that these lanes are in, but how do they actually what's the web
like? Is it all over the country? It's all over the world really,
because in the days before satellite, let's say the data is before GPS,
navigation over land masses was based on various kinds of radio beacons spread around
the country, around the world, and you would have these if high altitude
charts that would have not the land masses and the rivers and such which we
see on a VFR chart, but would have Okay, this is you know
corrid or x, y z or whatever. Here's the radio beacon, the
type, the frequency, et cetera, et cetera, and you would navigate
from waypoint to waypoint. As we go forward into the future, because we
have a much more sophisticated navigational system in place, you can go waypoint waypoint
from physical waypoints based on radio beacons of various types, or it could be
a virtual waypoint. So depending on where you're flying too, where you're flying
you know from what kind of traffics in the area and what air traffic control
can do. With two you can do something that is a great circle route,
the shortest path between two differences between two points, or you can do
some other path So you mentioned various kinds of restricted airspace. There's various kinds
of restrictions from VFR aircraft not flying without IFR type equipment in certain areas,
especially in the busy airports. You have military training areas which may be active
only some parts of the day or some parts of the year, where the
Air Traffic Control FA, for instance, could give you the authorization to fly
through that. Then you have other restricted areas that you can't do anything with
regardless. For example, try flying over the White House. Yeah right,
I wouldn't if I were you. Okay, it's time to go to a
break. So my guests tonight is doctor Todd Curtis, and we're talking about
aviation and UFOs. All right, So I'm going to take a look to
see there is a question here has your guest this is in the chat room
and Beach Bomb Bob wants to know, has your guests ever looked into public
FA radar records unknown flying objects in or around southern Catalina Island in southern California.
That's how where the TikTok? Have you heard about the TikTok? I've
heard about the TikTok which came out last year in the New York Times article
and apparently i'd been floating around there beforehand with article. I think it was
in the Drive that had an article about that some months or years before.
Yeah, and that's it. Well, that happens on a regular basis.
You have your major media, which on occasion has something. Then you have
non major media, independent media, you know, websites like my own.
It might have something interesting tanalyzing and whatnot, but it just doesn't catch the
attention of major media. Now, speaking personally about my website, airsafe dot
com, I'm constantly trying to get broader attention drawn to some issues, and
sometimes I'm able to do that. Most times I'm not right right, Okay,
just looking to see if there's any other questions up here in the chat
room here for you. Let's see, we're going to be taking calls after
this break, and let's see lots of stuff in the but I'm not seeing.
Oh, here's a question right here, what do you think about the
recent Ireland sighting. Well, we were just talking about that and people are
saying though that they are a few astronomers are saying they think it's an astronomical
event like a media or something, But according to what I've read about it,
it doesn't seem to behave like that. So well, I'll hold up
that there might be some astronomical phenomena that we're simply not aware of that doesn't
behave like metris, and that may behave in the fashion we just saw.
And again, it may be something physical, it may be something not physical.
Is this some sort of electrical magnetic phenomena that's going on? You know,
ball lightning, you know, and then some who knows. I'm not
a scientist of atmospheric things like that, but certainly there are some energetic events
from bowl lightning to jets and sprites, other kinds of electromagnetic phenomena which a
card in nature, which are either not very well understood or not very well
observed. Yeah, I think you mentioned sprites, and you mentioned that earlier.
Those are really bizarre for the person that's unaware of exactly what they are.
They're actually lightning that goes up and it has been observed actually by the
International Space Station too, I believe, haven't they've seen sprites as well?
Yes, indeed, and I believe there are specific experiments flown in either eighties
or the nineties on the Space Shuttle to study that very thing, and scientists
on the ground who'd been able to study it as well, and where it
goes that you know, you think of lightning striking the ground, it makes
you know the reason it's on its way to the closest object, you know,
to ground out. But do they know why these where these things are
going, why they're going up, and what makes them start and stop?
I haven't read enough into that to be able to answer that, but I
do know that those are open questions. For example, if you see a
jet or sprite going up, what kind of cloud to ground or cloud to
cloud lightning might be happening simultaneously with that, And would it be different in
character from your run of the mill lightning? Okay, they did they teach
pilots when they're training them, as far as you know, do they teach
them about things like ball lightning? And you know atmosphere in my training as
a private pilot, in my time as a flight test engineer in the military,
that sort of thing didn't come up at all. The things that well,
I would say aerospace physiology was the thing that we got a lot of
formal training and or at least, you know, having an idea of that
sort of thing, the effects of apoxia, that sort of thing, and
the fact that you could have a for example, I can't remember the name
for it, you could have a stationary light out there. But if you
have a dark background and no other you know, way of judging where it
is, if you're sitting still, you might think the lights moving. So
there's all sorts of optical illusions that can happen in the sky, especially at
nine. All right, welcome back everyone. My name is Martin Willis.
My guest tonight is doctor Todd Curtis, and we are talking aviation safety and
UFOs. We haven't really gotten into a lot of UFO cases, and I
think it's fascinating to hear your thoughts on them. But also I do want
to let everyone know that we are open for calls, So if you want
to call in, please do. Someone was listening to one of my shows
today on YouTube and saw the call in number and started calling me at two
o'clock in the afternoon. So just keep in mind this show is this show
number that is is only live or only usable during the show itself, and
that number is six h three nine six seven four h three. Oh,
if anyone wants to a call in, what would you consider the most besides
the ja L case, most significant case involved and you know our UFL was
involved. And when it comes to airline safety, Oh, I think hands
down would have to be the Phoenix Light of Lights event. That's something where
you not only had eyewitnesses, you had you know, clear evidence of people
who should know better covering up during the event itself. Specifically, the governor
of Arizona, who I believe was five Symington at that time, who was
a former Air Force pilot at the time of the event. I remember him
giving a press conference where he was like, you know, blowing off the
idea and making a joke out of it, bringing some guy in an alien
mask out in front of the press and saying, hey, guys, you
know, take it easy on this. All years later, he was on
camera and I can't remember which movie it was, where he basically said,
yeah, I saw this thing when it happened. So here it was a
government official government of Arizona at the time, who was involved for whatever reason
and squelching what was going on. Now what went on, I don't know,
and anyone who says they know, please have them call us. But
if you have something that is seen from the ground and from the sky,
from several different directions, from many different people, and it's over a wide
area of a major metropolitan area, the potential for aviation safety is obvious.
Clearly, if you were a pilot on the ground or in the sky and
you saw something like this, you wouldn't need air traffic control to tell you
not to run into the thing, but certainly you could have other effects going
on that would all For example, and again I'm just speculating off the top
of my head, what if you have something that is unknown over major metropolitan
area and you call out NORAD the F fifteens in the case of Seattle not
too long ago, and someone stoole an aircraft from seatach and they show up
in the area and they see something that looks to be hostile and they shoot
at it. It's not the UFO quote unquote, but maybe some pilot who
got in the way. So the potential exists if you have a confusing situation
like this that decisions could be actions could be taken that could put aircraft and
people on them at risk. That's right, and there was an Air Force
pilot supposedly, I don't know the details in this, that actually flew up
to take a look at the object. I don't know if you heard about
that. I don't. I didn't hear about that. Yeah, purportedly was
scared out of his mind and uh didn't want to talk about it and was
really really shaken up. And you know, there's there's the possibility of that
thing being miles wide, you know, and what type of craft. You
know, a lot of people have mentioned that they believe it was probably some
type of government experimental craft, and I don't. I can't really buy that
argumentum for umber of reasons. We have a call coming in. I'm going
to take it and hang on just one second here. Okay, caller,
you're on with us at podcast UFO and what's your first name? Where are
you calling from? Well, thank you very much. I'm Malcolm from Proper
good Or, Florida, and I would like to ask your just a question.
Sure, Okay, have you ever heard of a UFO stopping an aircraft
engine in mid flight the way they are reported to stop a car engine?
Now, as a matter of fact, that I haven't heard, and speaking
for large shed engines, especially having an engine shutdown in fly for any reason
is a very rare event, and so much so that if it happens,
it would be of high interest, if not to the FAA, then to
the engine manufacturer. So I would follow up that question by saying this,
if there is any group I would have information about unusual stoppages of aircraft engines
in flight, it would be the aircraft engine manufacturers. Okay, thanks you
very much. That's it all right, Malcolm, thanks for the call.
And further on that, if it's a proprietary information that doesn't have to report
it to the FA or the equivalent organization overseas, it could very well be
something they keep under their head for decades, because again a private company that's
in a heavily regulated industry, they obviously have to adhere to regulations when the
regulations exist. If there are no regulations to report a particular event, it
may never be reported. I'm sure you've heard there has been a military situation
on back in the seventies were the craft was disabled for a moment until I
think it had a lock on or something, and it was the whole craft
was disabled and then and then basically came back on again. You know,
you're talking about the Tehran event and that's seventy yeah, six, I think
it was. Yeah, I was in the seventies. So you've done you've
done your research. You seem to know quite a bit about well, when
it comes to bizarre things that happened to aircraft, I tend to perk up,
no matter what the reason is for this. In fact, one of
the things that I came across which I found very found very interesting Martin Cayden,
who was the author behind six Million Dollars Man, I had a book
of short stories of extremely bizarre things that happened to aviators or aircraft, from
you know, ghost airports to things in the sky. It's like, this
is a you know, this is too weird to be fiction. And where
did this guy get this stuff from? You know, he created the six
million dollars Man understand that, but this stuff was even well beyond that.
And he said it was like, you know, true tales that you're reporting,
not fiction, any made up. I can't remember the name of the
book off And though yeah, you know, there's also there was an Australian
case of a young pilot. I actually have a blog on my website about
it. But that was a private pilot. Do you pay attention to any
you know, smaller plane, you know, private planes in issues. I
pay attention to them when they come to a public prominence and they may have
an impact on safety or security. For example, I'm one of the ones
that I really paid attention to, not because of it had any major thing
to do with aviation safety and security, but it spoke more to the privacy
of a pilot. This is Harrison Ford when he had that crash and as
a World War two trainer near the same amount of airport a few years ago
on a golf course I believe, right on the golf course, which was
a spectacular piece of flying. I mean, if he were an average pilot,
he would have been dead. But the thing that really struck me is
the NTSB had a public docket on that event that was like a major airline
crash, very very detailed. You to the point that an average private pilot
who gets in an accident, they might have one line something in the NTSB
saying Cessna one two three four crash and the pilot was seriously injured. Harrison
Ford had several dissertations worth of stuff. So that speaks to if the government
is responsible for paying attention to things that really have an impact on safety and
security, why the heck are they paying attention to Harrison Ford, who you
know, to his credit, he wasn't killed. This had nothing to do
with current production aircraft. It had no major effect on traffic flow in Los
Angeles. It was just something he just felt. They just felt compelled to
study to a very great degree. Do that tool a Chicago Evan an O
Harrivan, Please don't do it to Harrison Ford. Wow. Yeah, that's
that's really interesting. Let's see. Another question that came in is how does
the FAA deal with unknown targets showing up on radar within US airspace? And
do the unknown targets get handed off to the military to deal with or I
believe you kind of mentioned that a lot of things are not too well looked
into with the FAA. So I don't know even know if there's that question
can be answered. Well, I can't speak to the detailed procedures that happened
inside the control centers there. I've talked to a few controllers over the years,
and certainly things come up that aren't identified For example, they might have
a transponder code that was what they might ask them to change the transponder code
so they can identify the aircraft. Well, if the aircraft changes the code
and they see that on the radar, it's like, okay, we have
communication involved with this pilot, and even with this pilot supplying the wrong way,
at least they're responding to us. If they give a command to change
the transponder code and there's no change of the transponder code, they might say
themselves, Okay, what's the problem here. Is this someone who's deliberately doing
something? Is this someone who's just lost? Is this none of the above
to be called Nora D? What do we do here? So that's a
situational sort of thing. It depends on the aircraft, depends on where where
there was not only the people in the cockpit saw this UFO, but the
passengers did. So that kind of leads me. I want to talk about
the Channel Islands. But also do you know of other cases where there were
passengers involved in US in a sighting. I can't think of one I had
involved passengers. When I came to mind, very briefly, was a America
West event I think it was nineteen ninety five over the Southwest where the crew
definitely saw something and I can't recall that report if the passengers also saw something.
But as far as other than the Channel Isolds event which you just mentioned
where there's some apparently miles long object or something seen at some distance from the
aircraft, I can't think of any recently or both pilots and passengers had an
eyeboat, eyeball with whatever was out there. Well, let's talk about the
Channel Island for those people on YouTube. I'm just bringing up a graphic on
that situation. Now, that's a seems to be a very very credible situation.
Can you can you explain to the listener exactly what happened? Well,
I better be able to do that because I believe back in two thousan fourteen
or fifteen, I was actually at the other TV show on that with one
of the I think it was one of the History Channel ones. If you
give me a minute, I can actually pull up my notes from that because
I made extensive notes for that show, and this was a Channel Islands was
fairly small aircraft, one of these smaller than a commuter airliner. So the
passengers could see the cockpit. It was like one of these you know,
four sixth seeders. The Channel Islands are a couple of small UK islands just
off the French coast in the English Channel. Let's see, and this is
like a triple engine, uh something Triland or something. Yeah, two thousand
and four. It was a Smithsonian Channel and this pilot and is seeing something
that looks like big yellow he almost like a big yellow bus. It was.
It was larger than the bus. We're talking something that was you know,
up to a mile exactly. Yeah. And of course right when I
need to pull up the computers getting me all kinds of hassles here, that's
all right. So just from memory, you know that I forget exactly how
many passengers, but everyone saw it, absolutely and it was reported to the
requisite authorities, and the pilot was even interviewed on television more than once.
So this wasn't something that was hidden. It was also something where I saw
no real follow up to it. That is, was there an explanation from
the Civil Aviation Authorities in Britain or the AIB, which is their equivalent of
the NTSB. I've seen nothing about this subsequent to that, do you happen
to know in particular. I haven't looked into that case in a long time,
But do you know in particular if those were there was two of them,
I believe, were they moving objects? Did they see them take off
or anything like that? I don't recall if they saw them in motion or
in flight? And do you know approximately how long that sighting lasted? It
was on the order of minutes, not seconds. And again I can't remember
that the details of it later on in the show, if I can pull
this up, out'll get back to you on that, because again I did
make notes about that over four years ago, and I don't want to go
on my memory too much beyond that, except to say that here was a
situation which had it happened in the US, I have a feeling that the
pilots would have been far more reluctant to report this to the public. For
example, this pilot, I saw nothing about his career being in any way
impacted by the fact that he saw this. Do you think that it helped
him that he had witnesses that were passengers? Oh? Absolutely, this is
not something that they could pass office. This person has some sort of sorry
I'm having trouble understanding right now. Later, I should have unplugged my Alexa.
All right, Alexe stop. Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding right now.
Okay, that happens a little later, that happens again. I'm gonna
uplugged the thing. Well, I've always heard we'd be taken over by artificial
intelligence, so it's it's beginning. Yeah, it's artificial I don't know if
it's intelligence and what. Some other notable cases I believe I sent you a
link to one in Arizona. I don't know if you'd looked into that one
in the Organs, the organ one that happened just a few months ago.
This was a high flying aircraft or some sort of vehicle that was going between
northern California southern Oregon, going up towards Washington State. And this is something
where there are several high flying airliners who saw this, apparently from their estimate,
only several thousand feet above their flight altitude and in the same general direction
as north south traffic on the West coast. And this is something where and
again the air traffic controllers didn't have any kind of transponder code on this thing.
If this were a military aircraft. If this were a private company that
had some sort of test vehicle, it would be let's just say, the
height of irresponsibility to fly it in or near a quarter that's occupied by airliners
without telling air traffic control, without clearing this ahead of time with the FAA.
So could this have been some rogue op writer who is operating some vehicle
up there. Certainly it could. But let's just say that the level of
technology and effort it takes to get an aircraft in the stratosphere means that you're
not going to have a single person fuel this up, maintain the aircraft,
and get it up to altitude. If this were some sort of conventional vehicle,
there had to be a group of people or some organization involved to get
that airplane where it was. If it wasn't, if this was some sort
of natural phenomena, well, it certainly didn't act like any natural phenomena I
know of in the sky. Didn't act like a meteor, didn't act like
a ball, lightning, didn't act like anything that made sense given the verbal
descriptions by these airline pilots. All right, now I'm gonna I'm gonna go
out on a limb and ask you a question here and that you may be
hesitant to answer. Do you think it is a possibility that we are we
might be visited from another intelligence. Certainly possible, but again it's possible doesn't
mean it's likely, doesn't mean it's one hundred percent certain that's happened in the
past or that could happen in the future. Certainly, one could project the
fact that there are billions of galaxies, not even to mention planets that are
out there, and that already in the past ten to fifteen years, very
scientists have seen dozens, if not hundreds of extrasolar planets. It is planetary
bodies orbiting around the Sun other than their own that are out there. Some
of them are even in what they hold a habitable habitable zone. That is,
given the solar radiation string coming off of the star and the distance from
that planet, it's the kind of distance that could possibly allow an atmosphere like
Earth to exist. So certainly life could be existing elsewhere as we know it
now. Intelligence, that's a broader question. What constitutes intelligence. We just
had Alexo a few minutes ago, so to interrupt our conversation, said the
name I'm having trouble understanding right now. Obviously it is intelligence quote unquote if
you can define it as such, especially if you're trying to sell stock in
this company, that's not necessarily an intelligence that would respect or would fear.
Does an intelligence like that exists? Possibly? Is there cybernetic kinds of intelligences
that exist right now on Earth in a corporate sort of environment, or with
things like the system I can't mention because it'll start responding, or similar systems
from Google. Yeah, but is it an intelligence? I could fly some
sort of aerospace vehicle have no clue. A number of I guess skeptics,
And I would say skeptics with the you know, like it's a bad word.
I think it's good to have skepticism and to look at something, you
know, objectively instead of just you know, buying into you know, the
fact that it's alien or whatever. But some skeptics will kind of go the
other way a little bit too strong and just say that. I had one
on this show, Roger Nigard a few years ago, as a filmmaker,
and he was on and he said that he thinks one hundred percent of the
UFOs that are seen are you know, secret military craft. Do you think
that you know, I mean, I think it's very possible that some are.
But do you think that there's possibility of a lot of you know,
unknown aircraft being linked to the military or or like you said, private contracts.
It's very easily to speak to the secret military aircraft. The answer is
it's not one hundred percent, because, as you just mentioned, sometimes you
have a private contractor who on speculation builds something that they're trying to sell the
military. It's not a military aircraft. It's not even a developmental aircraft of
the military if there's no contract sign So now, and there have been these
things in the past, So now one hundred percent of these unknowns are not
military aircraft or military projects. Could they be projects made by human beings?
I would say a good fraction of the Manor would I say, Andrew,
Now, because there are some things that are out there that turns out to
be not vehicles. For example getting back the jets and sprites. Again,
that wasn't a lightning type of event. But let's say you have somefents more
like ball lightning that somehow, for whatever reason, behaves in a manner consistent
with some sort of lighted craft for some period of time. You can point
to that and say, hey, this looks just like a secret military aircraft
with some plasma around it. Now it's ball lightning. So I wouldn't say
a hundred percent on that. Do I have any evidence to say that sixty
percent and ten percent? I don't, simply because what I call the numerator
and denominator problem. We don't have the numerator. We don't have the total
number of events that are anomalous. We don't have the denominator the total number
of events including the anomalous ones. There could be many secretive military aircraft flights
that happened that we don't know about, so it won't be in then.
So now we have no real way, in my opinion, of making a
reasonable estimate as to what fraction of these or military aircraft or military programs.
Good answer, thank you. UM So, I want to just take a
little sidestep just for a few minutes here, and I want to talk about
um I want to talk about airline safety and c and in general, because
I know that you know, over the years it's it's getting better and better,
but when you hear about a crash, everybody knows about it. But
currently, like, on any given day, how many flights would you say
there are around the world? Would you be able to throw out some ballpark
stats for us? Boy, I would be able to throw All right,
it's not on my end. Hang on. Everyone looks like it's like his
skype is frozen, ringing through to his skype. So caller, thanks for
calling in. What's your first name? Where are you calling from? Ah?
This is Linda from New York. I thought maybe i'd provide you with
some information while you're hanging there. Is this the Linda? This is the
Linda. Yes, how are you good? Can I say? Do you
mind if I say your full name? Oh? Absolutely, no problem.
All right, this is Linda Simmerman. Now we have someone else calling in.
You're gonna have to wait another caller. Thanks for thanks for joining the
call. Thanks for filling in. I appreciate that. No problem. I
actually do have an interesting aviation related case that someone just sent me about two
weeks ago. Oh excellent. Just to keep in mind up, Just keep
this in mind, Linda, that our guests may call in any minute.
So I would like to join him in. Yeah sure, yeah, no,
no, I want you to stay on though, so because I want
you to talk about this with him as well, So go ahead, Okay.
Well, she was on a flight back from Ghana in Africa. She
was there on business. She's a scientist, so a very credible person,
and she's looking out the window and she sees that the night flight, she
sees this beautiful what she thought was the full moon. And she had two
windows, one over the wing, one to the right of that, and
she said it was just the most stunning view of this full moon. And
she's watching it for close to an hour and then she sees watches as it
slowly sinks behind the cloud bank, and she just she was so enamored with
this. She remembers the next morning she emailed her sister saying, I just
had the most amazing having experienced the light of this full moon. Well that
night, she's home in New York and she's doing some chores. She looks
out the window and there's the crescent moon. It was only an eight percent
crescent, and she's like, freaking out, how can this possibly be?
I just saw the full moon on my flight yesterday. So she called me
up, knowing what I do, and you know, I asked her a
series of questions, well, did you see any you know, craters or
the seas on the moon? And she realized she never saw any sort of
surface features, just this beautiful bright light tracking her plane for almost an hour.
And this was the first experience like this she ever had, and she
she didn't quite know how to deal with it. So I said, it
wasn't threatening. You enjoyed it. I think you should be considered, you
know, consider yourself fortunate. Did she do you happen to know if she
talked to anybody else on the was she alone traveling alone? She was traveling
alone, yes, and she didn't mention it to any other passengers. And
I asked if she took any picture pictures and she said, well why should
I? It was a full moon. As as far as she do.
Yeah, So, um, I just thought that was remarkable and I didn't
I didn't see any other cases over that part of the Atlantic. But it
was the next night that the Irish sightings took place, so, you know,
not not really close. Um. I don't know what track they took,
but I would think from Africa to New York, didn't go anywhere near
Ireland. But still, um, something unusual was certainly going on in the
sky at that time. Time. Now, Linda, you've been a guest
on the show a number of times and and you've become you know, you've
listened to a lot of shows, and you've helped me out a number of
times. So if you want to tell, I'm just waiting to see if
our guest, our guest is back. Certainly I will hang up and Ben.
Yeah, Todd, so you're back. I'm sure it was a government
that shut you down, which you think so must have been. Yes,
I'm for me in essay. Yes, there's some sort of secret society.
I should have paid the dues too, but no, I didn't pay the
dues, and this is what I get for them. Yeah, that's that's
right. That's all right. So we're on with Linda Zimmerman. She is
a researcher in Upper State, New York and has she was just telling a
tale briefly, I'll just tell if you wanted to say hi to or This
person contacted her and saying they saw they was watching the full moon for up
to an hour outside of their window of their flight from Africa to New York,
and when she got home she noticed that it was a crescent moon,
so it was some type of object she was looking at for up to an
hour. Interesting huh, very interesting. We were talking from full moon what
appeared to be a full moon's recrestent moon, which means unless you had some
sort of missing time event, it wasn't the moon major missing time like thirty
twenty days, so exactly. Well, Linda, well, I will let
you get back to your guest. I'm enjoying what you're saying. Thank you
very much for being on and enjoying the show. It's always Martin, thank
you, Thank you, Linda. I appreciate that. Yeah, all right,
take care. All right, So my apologies see yourself and to your
guests for the technical failure which was more mindful and my power chord was out
and the darn thing drained out without me noticing pochords back in. Now.
Now, just don't I was wondering if it might have been. I don't
even dare to say, Alex, that might have done. Don't repeat that.
Yeah, we will not eat that. Yeah. So one more question
had came in. Do you think the recent incident over Ireland that we were
talking about reported by the media that included audio of the pilot's conversation could have
only been released as a result of this subject having more credibility. And what
the listener is talking about is, you know, the UFO fields has changed
a little bit since the New York Times article came out last year in December,
And so what do you think about that question? Do you think it
uf always have more credibility now with respect to this particular case, I don't
believe that enters into it at all, because, thanks to the technology of
the Internet and other changes in air traffic control communication technology, there are air
traffic control conversations that are streaming live around the world as we speak, and
being recorded by various private individuals and groups, to the point that when an
event happens, let's say, for example, well a few weeks ago,
when the airplane was stolen in Seattle, there was air traffic control conversations of
that that were released almost immediately by various private groups. I believe Live atc
was one of them, and this was without going through the FBI, without
going through law enforcement. So I believe this was a case with the Irish
event as well, that this conversation was in the clear, that is,
it was picked up and recorded on the fly and released that way. So
what I think this is an indicator of is in the future, if there's
some sort of major event where there's air traffic control conversation, even if it's
an unexpected event in an obscure part of the world, that conversation will be
reported and will be out there sooner than anything. It's kind of it must
be kind of boring though to listen to. I mean, for instance,
what it's the pilot's famous saying there's twelve thousand hours of boredom when one second
of horror or something like that. I don't know exactly what this saying is,
but I've heard it. But people wouldn't really notice. You know,
you're saying it's monitored. But who do people really listen to it? I
mean, what are they listening for? There might be people out there who
are still in the aviation they would listen to it. I'm not one of
them. But this is the kind of thing where, again, if some
newsworthy event happens in some area, it might be something where you know,
it might have been recorded for several hours, and people will go back and
listen closer to those recent recordings and see if there's anything that stands out,
and again, this is air traffic control. The conversations only, for example,
between the aircraft and air traffic control. The internal conversations within the cockpit
would not be on this. The internal conversations within air traffic control centers or
the control tower or what have you is not going to be there either.
It's basically only the radio communications and it only includes a voice. It doesn't
includes the data transmission that may be going on in the background. Okay,
I understand. I had someone on I don't know a couple of years ago
that was talking about drones and she said that the government, the US government
is installing new type of new type of tracking system and it's she gave an
enormous price tag. Is this anything you've heard about? It's going to be
a whole new way of tracking planes, of tracking. Well, there is
all sorts. There's always an evolution going on with respect to the FA does
air traffic control. One of them has been going on for quite some time
as they moved what's called ADSB, which I used to know the acronym off
the top of my head. But it's basically a way of tracking aircraft that's
going to be relying less on monitoring the transponder responses to radar interrogations and more
to do with ongoing communication between the aircraft and air traffic control centers, using
satellites, using ground stations, using a variety of means to get the information
between the airplane and air traffic controlling back. You know that the crash a
few years ago where the plane was just vanished, They had no idea where
it was, and searched and searched, you know the one I'm talking about,
an HG seventy. That's right, Okay, So of course, whenever
something dramatic like that happens, conspiracy theories come out everywhere about it, and
one of them was someone was touting online that it was an alien abduction.
Of course, a those type of things come up after a while. If
you look for him, you can find them. In that situation. I
know they found pieces of the airplane, but that's highly unusual that they just
absolutely have. You know, it's off the radar and gone. Well,
there's several things about that event. They are highly unusual. Basically, the
early part of the flight was quite normal. It was transiting from Leiblo's Kala
and pour towards China, and it basically made a left turn of the South
China Sea and passing over some areas, including one city that was the maintenance
base for Malaysia Airlines. So the speculation might have been, well, maybe
there was a problem they were trying to go to the maintenance base. The
aircraft was painted by military radar, I believe in Thailand and one other country
as was going over that part of Southeast Asia, so they had some tracking
of it until it went out to the Indian Ocean. And basically the direction
it took was such that if you want to find a lonelier, less transverse
part of the world, you could not do much better than where this airplane
apparently ended up. This is a part of the world that is not heavily
traffic and ship traffic. It was never a hot spot during the Cold War.
So unlike the North Atlantic between North America and Europe, you don't have
all sorts of sound equipment on the seafloor listening for submarine screws and that sort
of thing. So the kind of military presence you have in North Atlantic where
something explode was into water, it'll be heard that wasn't available on the Indian
Ocean, and fortunately because of the communication system that was on the aircraft,
which was capable of although they didn't have the system in place to send a
regular technical transmissions from the aircraft back to home base, there was basically a
basic once an hour signal that was deeped out from this airplane and the Inmarsat
system picking it up on their satellites. Was they were able to later figure
out based on when these signals arrived at the satellites, they backfigured where this
aircraft could have been, and they basically had it narrowed to a strip of
ocean that was on arc I can't remember how many miles long, with basically
an area of the ocean that was roughly the size of Pennsylvania is where they
had been looking for the aircraft a few months ago and didn't find it yet.
But conspiracy theories aside, the best available evidence was the inn Maar SAD
signals that basically specified a part of the Indian Ocean where this aircraft might have
stopped flying. Wow, Wow, that's yeah, that's a real mystery.
I heard something about the possibility of the pilot may have had some emotional issues,
but no one you know, I mean that may be another conspiracy.
Go ahead. Oh there. There are four basic theories I came up with
based on the limited data that was out there. And these are the four
theories I had within a week or two of this plane disappearing. One was
an old fashioned hijacking, some outside entity takes over the airplane. Second,
an insider hijacking, kind of like what happened with the German Wings aircraft in
twenty fifteen. I think it was where the pilot locked out the other pilot
and deliberately crossed the airplane. You have a normal, complex accident that is
the kind of accident that happens in modern aviation, an airliner aviation where in
spite of all the sophisticated systems and procedures in place, combination of events or
situations took place where there was no real way to deal with it. There
was no system in place, there was no procedure in place. The crew
did everything they could to keep the airplane in the air, but didn't bother
to communicate with the outside world because they were too busy trying to fly the
plane. And the fourth one, which is basically you know, these are
not in isolation I think it's a combination of one of the first three plus
the fourth one, the fourth one being at some point during the flight,
the crew or whoever was flying the aircraft was either unwilling or unable to make
any changes to the fly control system or or the autopilot system, and it
just kept flying at a nice steady altitude, nice steady speed until it ran
out of fuel. Oh boy, that's scary, all right, So I
do want to talk before your internet crashed your computer crash there. I did
ask you the question if we can talk a little bit about stats, how
basically just throw some figures out that you are aware of. First of all,
like, how safe is flying commercial? For it? Well, it's
all safe. I'm glad you said. The word safe. Safe is a
like beauty. It's a subjective concept that's in the eye of the beholder and
depends on context. I've actually jumped out of an airplane once as a skydiver,
and only once. Was it safe? I thought so, otherwise I
wouldn't have done it. Was it risky, much more so than being a
passenger in an airplane? Is the risk acceptable? It was to me at
the time, which is why I thought it was safe. It was unacceptable
to virtually anyone with any sense, and it would have been considered to be
an unsafe EVM. Sorry, I'm having trouble understanding right now. Please try
it a little later. Is there a way? How difficult? Is there
is a way? Yeah, not difficult at all. It's just saying one
key word there that's waking up, waking her up. So poor Alexa.
Technical problem solved. Good, I mean, increases your guest to have and
he can't get his podcast here to go straight? What's wrong with this guy?
A good thing. You're not flying the plane, right, That's why
I was an engineer and not a pilot. Yeah, so I just basically
want to uh, you know, I mean I've heard of people throw out
things like, um, you know, it's it's uh, you have much
more of a chance getting into an accident going to the airport than you do
flying a plane. And and uh, you know, millions of planes are
uh you know in the air per year or all that stuff. I mean,
at any given time, there's thousands of them, tens of thousands of
them in the air right any even time, during the main part of the
flying day, there could be on the order of nine thousand airliners flying with
like a million million two people in the air constantly as we speak. Again,
we're talking about a situation where you have tens of thousands of aircraft airline
a aircraft flying every day around the world, of course, various time zones
and such. Assume that you have an average a passenger load of one hundred
people. Depending on the time of day, you could have well over a
million and a half people airborne in the sky. The US two seventeen,
according to the FAA, passenger airlines only had about eight point six million flights.
And this is eight point six million flights over three hundred and sixty five
days. So we're talking about again tens of thousands of flights per day.
And sorry, my calculator in my head isn't quite working right. And so
eight point three million divided by three hundred and sixty five that's how many we
have going on. How many times does it result in a disaster and a
disaster in my book, does a single passenger get killed during the fly?
Well, in two eighteen or two in this country we actually had one happened
for the first time in a long time. There was a southwest airliner flying
near Philly. There was a rapid decompression event which happened after there was an
uncontingent engine failure. Piece of the engine hit a window, window pops out.
Unfortunately, one passenger was pulled out of the aircraft and ended up dying.
That was the first passenger fatality in the US on even the US or
a non US airliner since twenty thirteen. That was the event in San Francisco
with the AEGEANA seven seven seven, and there you had roughly nine of the
people survived. There are three people killed, three hundred plus or roughly three
hundred people who survived. That you would have to go back to two thousand
and nine in the United States for the last time you had an airliner crash
killing everybody on board. That was roughly a month after the Miracle on the
Hudson event that we've heard of the movie subtly. Personally, I haven't seen
it because I can't stand movies like that. Go figure, and no one
got killed in the Miracle on the Hudson. Everyone got killed a few weeks
later in the Buffalo crash. Now around the world, the situation is not
the same because let's just say that the infrastructure that other countries are using very
wildly. The Western Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, they have
all the latest and greatest equipment in use. They also have the strictest regulations,
and the regulations aren't very different between international flying and domestic flying. Without
getting too fine a point on it, each nation is responsible for the regulations
they have within that nation when it comes to flying. When it comes to
international flying, there's a set of standards that every nation adheres to. If
you don't adhere to it, it's likely you won't get landing rights in a
second country. So international flying has a level of risks that's I would say
universally low. That is the likelihood of flying on a flight that is an
international flight relatively low high. When it comes to domestic fire, Yeah,
I know we're off the UFO topic, but I still want to just get
a little bit of this, And in the training that I had, I
remember, you know, the conception of ditching is, you know, you
land in water. Everything's cool, but it's not cool. It's like you
land in water. You it's something like ninety percent chance that you're gonna not
make it. You know, funny. I'm glad you mentioned ditching because it
also speaks to yeah, when it comes to normalous events, how you define
things will determine whether or not you count something as being in that category,
or would color your idea of how often it happens. I actually lift up
one day on the FA website, what's the definition for ditching? I couldn't
find one. I thought, this is a basic concept. I should see
it in the Airman's Information Manual or some one of the glossaries. I couldn't
find one, so I came up my own. Basically, is there a
chance of someone drowning if the thing sinks? Now, planes land and water
all the time, running off the runway, et cetera. Maybe it's shallow
water. Planes crash in water all the time, but very rarely do you
have a classic ditching that is the flight crew deliberately says we're going to put
this airplane in the water, and they put it in the water. Yeah.
The miracle on the Hudson was only the fourth time I could find in
the history of jetty aviation where that definition of different ditching happened. Amazing.
I think we have about four minutes left somewhere around there. I want to
talk quickly about one other flight where there's been a crash where there's been a
lot of conspiracy, and that's Flight TWA with four minutes left TWA, eight
hundred off of Long Island. There's been movies written about it, you know,
lots of stories where people think that was shot down, possibly by era
from the military. What do you know about that particular crash that happened in
July seventeen, nineteen ninety six, literally two weeks of the day after I
started safe dot com, which so it was like a real education there because
I saw the Internet in its infancy responding to aviation crashes. I was at
Boeing Safety Engineering at the time, and our department supported our FUELD investigator,
so we were in deep on that one. That was a subtle problem,
and to make a long story short, there was some sort of fuel air
mixture in the center fuel tank that exploded. Prior to that event, the
basic understanding the industry was that it wasn't possible to have a combination of temperature
and pressure and fuel density aerosol density to cause an explosion, even if you
had an ignition source that was wrong. There was an underlying assumption when it
came to design of aircraft that was proven wrong by that event. Subsequent designs
have taken steps to inert the fuel or to take other steps to make that
kind of event not happen again. So yeah, it was heavily investigated,
conspiracy theories aside, it was overwhelming evidence that it was accident due to a
not complete understanding of how explosions happened in a fuel tank. That's it's it's
just, uh, I guess we might have a we might have a problem.
Let me just see, we've had a few of them. There's still
okay, it's odd. It just it just went out a bit there.
But we're all set. We're going to keep moving here. Whoops um so
um, and and if I may take twenty seconds to pull that back into
the UFO area. Yeah, that was a key for flight eight hundred.
There was a concerted effort to actually use the data that was out there,
do research on the data that had been done before, to try and figure
out what's the answer to this question, what the heck is it and how
did it happen. If you put that kind of effort, even one tenth
the effort toward resolving things like the Irish event, or the Phoenix Lights or
the event that happened recently in North California and Oregon. Then there would be
better answers out there than what we have now, which is mostly speculation.
Yeah right, Well, Hey, we're just about right at the end of
our show. We have just about a minute left here. So I do
want to thank you so much for being on the show this evening. And
so the name of your website is airsafe dot com. Is airsafe dot com
your location to go to for information about airline safety and security, giving them
the public good information since nineteen ninety six. Wow, that's a long time
for a website to be around. It is very long time. And I
didn't have great airback then. All right, Well, it's been entertaining,
and thanks so much. Oh just one other quick thing. You do a
podcast there too as well, sometimes right on very rare occasions, the conversation
at airsafe dot com, And as we spoke off the line earlier, one
of these days soon I'll resurrect it for the first time in several months.
To have a certain form of flight attendant on my show. All right,
sounds good. All right, thanks a lot, Todd, thank you.
All right, Okay, everyone, so that's it for our show, and
thank you so much for listening. And I thought it was fascinating. I
hope you enjoyed it too. And we'll be back next week with astronomer Mark
D'Antonio, repeat guest. Always a lot of fun, so we'll be talking
about all kinds of things and back next week. And thank you everyone.
I appreciate it, and thank you for your support, and remember to keep
your eyes to the sky.