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Disclosure Team; Christiaan van Heijst - 747 Cargo Pilot UAP Sightings
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Christiaan van Heijst was born in the Netherlands in 1983. At the age of 20 he was hired as a First Officer on the Fokker 50 Turboprop, flying all over Europe, for multiple African airlines and as a military contractor in Afghanistan. A few years later, he moved to the Boeing 737, flying all over Europe. During that time, he was also working as a freelance ferry- & test pilot for a commercial service provider.
After 4,5 years on the Boeing 737 he was hired as a First Officer on the Boeing 747-400. Christiaan has been flying the Boeing 747 for over twelve years now and has seen a large variety of destinations and landscapes from that flightdeck, leading to the position of Captain today.
He has close to 9,500 hours flight time, including over 6,000 hours on the Boeing 747. In addition, Christiaan has become well-known for his aerial photography, which has been reproduced widely in print and online.
His photos have been shared worldwide by media, including CNN, BBC, TIMES, Daily Mail, National Geographic and the list is constantly growing.
During those years he has seen a large array of fascinating things from the sky and even captured some with his camera. The majority of these sightings have been identified and explained, but a couple of them are still genuine unknowns.
Christiaan Twitter: https://twitter.com/JPCvanHeijst
Christiaan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jpcvanheijst/
Christiaan Website: https://jpcvanheijst.com/
Christiaan book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cargopilot-C...
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After 4,5 years on the Boeing 737 he was hired as a First Officer on the Boeing 747-400. Christiaan has been flying the Boeing 747 for over twelve years now and has seen a large variety of destinations and landscapes from that flightdeck, leading to the position of Captain today.
He has close to 9,500 hours flight time, including over 6,000 hours on the Boeing 747. In addition, Christiaan has become well-known for his aerial photography, which has been reproduced widely in print and online.
His photos have been shared worldwide by media, including CNN, BBC, TIMES, Daily Mail, National Geographic and the list is constantly growing.
During those years he has seen a large array of fascinating things from the sky and even captured some with his camera. The majority of these sightings have been identified and explained, but a couple of them are still genuine unknowns.
Christiaan Twitter: https://twitter.com/JPCvanHeijst
Christiaan Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jpcvanheijst/
Christiaan Website: https://jpcvanheijst.com/
Christiaan book:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cargopilot-C...
!! SUPPORT DISCLOSURE TEAM !!
Become a YouTube member: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMEn...
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/disclosureteam
Buy me a coffee:
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Transcript
Introduction to the Anomalous Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Anomalous Podcast Network. Multiple voices, one phenomenon.
UFO Sightings and Technology Over Decades
00:00:14
Speaker
One realizes very quickly we've been seeing this technology for decades. I had access to all those programs.
Witnesses of a Windowless Object
00:00:48
Speaker
no windows, no real wings or control surfaces, no obvious signs of repulsion. And yet this object is witnessed now by four separate individuals of two separate aircraft.
Live Interview with Christian, the Pilot
00:01:08
Speaker
Welcome back everybody to another live interview here on the Disclosure Team channel.
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm really excited for this one. I've been speaking to Christian now for a few months behind the scenes, discussing what he's experienced, his anomalous sightings and things like that. And he's finally decided to come forward and talk about it, which is really good in this current climate. You've had a lot of pilots come forward recently.
00:01:33
Speaker
So I'm just glad that we're seeing more and more. And I hope that videos and interviews like this only prompt more people to come forward. It's a safe place and we really highly respect what they have to discuss. So yeah, to everyone in the live chat, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. If you do have any questions throughout the interview, please pop them in capital letters. It just helps me see them more clearly.
00:01:57
Speaker
We're going to be going through quite a few different cases and sightings that Christians had, so you might have questions pertaining to that particular
Interview Guidelines and Introduction of Christian
00:02:05
Speaker
case. I will do my best to see them and ask them as we're discussing that individual case. My apologies in advance if I don't, but I've got lots to do. So yeah, keep the chat nice and calm and collected and positive and
00:02:20
Speaker
you know you always do so i i i don't really need to say these days well let's waste anymore not let's not waste anymore time and my guest today's christian van heist he is a 747 cargo pilot with quite an extensive flying career which we're gonna go through as well uh so yeah here he is please welcome christian van heist christian how you doing good good how are you vinny i'm really good we're here finally
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for inviting me. It's such an honor. And it's really nice to finally present a couple of cases I've been wondering about, pondering about for the last couple of years. So really, really excited. Yeah, thank you so much. It's the honor's all mine.
Christian's Aviation Journey
00:03:00
Speaker
The pleasure's all mine. This is going to be a fantastic conversation. Like I said, we've been speaking now for quite a few months. And I understand that it's a sensitive topic for commercial and private and civilian pilots to talk about, but at the same time,
00:03:16
Speaker
through our discussions, I think you said to me, you understand the importance of coming forward. So thank you so much for doing that. Oh, yeah, you're more than welcome. And I must say for me as a commercial pilot, there's not so much pressure.
00:03:30
Speaker
Actually in that sense it's kind of a good thing that I'm not a military pilot because I don't have to adhere to any secrecy or any any commanders in that sense. I'm a commercial pilot and if I see something it's open for me to share it with the world. As we go through all these cases hopefully in the next
00:03:50
Speaker
hour or so we will see that I think there's also a lot of possible explanations for some of the things that I've seen so I can talk openly about everything and anything and let's let's try and get to the bottom of it at least a couple of them absolutely fantastic I can't wait but I think initially I'd love to know a bit more about yourself you know about your career and and you know starting from a young age what what got you into the the love of aviation and flying if you can start wherever you like
00:04:19
Speaker
Well, basically, the love for flying started when I was really young, when I was, I think, four years old. I had my first flight as a passenger. And it's one of the first memories I had, just looking out of the window and enjoying all the views. And it still is mesmerizing to see the clouds and to see the world from such a literally unique perspective from above the world. And this triggered me, I think, subconsciously to be interested in flying and aviation.
00:04:44
Speaker
And as soon as I could, I pursued a career in aviation. First, I studied for about two years aeronautical engineering, but I decided that instead of the drawing board, I wanted to fly the airplanes myself. And actually, I already started taking flying lessons, glider lessons when I was 14, and I got my first pilot license when I was 17, so I was really motivated to be in the air and to fly.
00:05:08
Speaker
and I've been really lucky so far. When I was 20 I managed to get my first job as a pilot in aviation. Pretty young, I still had a lot of hair but that's what aviation does to you I guess. No but without kidding I had a
00:05:24
Speaker
I was really lucky to get a job with a company that was basically leasing out their airplanes, including crews, to other airlines. It was on a small airplane, a Fokker 50 turboprop, which is relatively small, only 50 seats, a short-range operation.
00:05:41
Speaker
For that company, I flew for a lot of European airlines. We flew a lot of passengers for, you named it, all the big European airlines.
Flying Contracts in Africa and Afghanistan
00:05:49
Speaker
But I also flew contracts in Africa for a lot of African companies, which was really adventurous. And we had a military contract or military contract in Afghanistan, where I flew for almost one and a half years doing military contracts flights, basically hired by the military.
00:06:06
Speaker
And we just shipped all their people and equipment around and that was really something, really adventurous. It was just great, really amazing. But my ambition was to fly a bit bigger than just a turboprop. And unfortunately, when I was, what was it?
00:06:26
Speaker
Twenty-three I was hired on the 737 with a European charter company, Dutch Airline. And for four and a half, five years, I flew the Boeing 737 all over Europe, which was a really interesting experience
Transition to Larger Aircraft
00:06:39
Speaker
as well. Really good for my flying career because as a pilot you want to have jet hours.
00:06:44
Speaker
And even though I really liked the job, my ambition was still to see the world and to fly around the world in a bit bigger airplane. So eventually I was hired when I was 27 on the Boeing 747 as a cargo pilot and this was already
00:07:01
Speaker
I think 12 or 13 years ago and since then I've been flying all over the world in the Boeing 747 and it's just the best job ever. It's really cool. Yeah it's been fantastic and now since about one year I'm captain on the 747. I'm 39 years old so I've been really lucky in that sense to have a steep career in aviation.
00:07:23
Speaker
I still fly small airplanes, Cessnas, etc., just across the Netherlands sometimes with friends and family, so I'm an aviation nerd. Besides that, I'm interested in aerospace, I'm really interested in the Apollo missions, which is a topic that is triggering my imagination.
Interests in History, Photography, and Aerospace
00:07:42
Speaker
interested in history, just basically everything that has to do with ancient history to modern history in the First World War, Second World War. So yeah, that's basically me. And also a major part of my life is photography, and this is pretty much parallel with the flying career.
00:08:00
Speaker
And it started almost literally from the first flight I told you about when I saw these views as a young boy from the cabin windows. I just felt the need to immortalize it, to capture it. And ever since my first flight, during flight training I always had this whole camera with me, not taking too many pictures, but whenever there was a chance to take pictures of some mountains or clouds, whatever.
00:08:22
Speaker
And especially when I flew in Africa and Afghanistan on the Fokker 50, I realized that the stuff that I was seeing, the adventures I was experiencing were really, really unique. And I just had to document it. Not just the views, which were already kind of interesting, but just the adventures, all this stuff we did there and experienced. It had to be captured. And if I wouldn't do it, then nobody else would do it. So I invested a little bit for as far as I could in the smaller camera.
00:08:49
Speaker
And this was basically, as I said, parallel with my flying career. Every time I upgraded an airplane, I was able to upgrade my photography equipment as well. So flying the 747, that means we fly really long distances generally with a low workload during cruise flights, which allows me to take pictures mostly from the cockpit.
00:09:13
Speaker
kind of specialized in aerial photography. And it's a big passion together with flying that, for me personally, is just a great combination. And I'm really enjoying that. So for me, flying is really a lot of fun. And I do it with a lot of passion. And I do it as a professional. And on top of that, capturing the beauty, capturing the unbelievable landscapes from above, and literally sharing that with the world through social media and my website, et cetera. It's just two things that blend together perfectly.
00:09:43
Speaker
And yeah, so in a nutshell, that's me. Yeah, maybe some viewers might have some questions about the flying experience. I've got almost nine and a half thousand hours of flight experience right now, of which just over six thousand on the 747.
00:10:00
Speaker
which doesn't mean too much, but it just shows that I'm not just the first guy to take a flying lesson and proclaim to see funny stuff from the air. I know what I'm doing. Yeah, so in a nutshell, that's me. That's amazing. Thank you so much. It's such a romantic career flying around the world. It's
00:10:22
Speaker
Yeah, I really envy you in some ways. So yeah, thank you for that. I recommend everybody that's watching, listening. If you go to the description below, you'll find all of Christian's social media links and his website. I highly recommend you go and check it out. There's some absolutely amazing photography and stuff put on there. So please go and check that out.
Christian's Interest in UFOs
00:10:41
Speaker
Right. So let's move on to the topic of UFOs. I'd just like to know, you mentioned that you have a
00:10:47
Speaker
a passion for sort of history and things like that. When did the UFO subject first kind of enter your life and to what level?
00:10:55
Speaker
Well of course I heard about the lore about UFOs and the flying saucer myths when I was very young because it's part of our culture but I never really took it seriously if I'm really honest. It was too much of a fringe topic and the big problem is that there was only a lot of anecdotal evidence
00:11:20
Speaker
I just couldn't take it too serious because I consider myself an open-minded skeptic in the sense that I'm open-minded to a lot of topics, I'm open-minded to philosophies etc. But I'm kind of skeptic and if I don't see it with my own eyes, I don't know, I cannot really be interested in those kind of topics.
00:11:44
Speaker
Having said that, I saw the interview with the commander David Traver for the viewers who don't know who he is. He's an ex-Tobkin Navy pilot, also an F-18 pilot, and he's a very trustworthy guy. He did a couple of interviews, including with Joe Rogan and also for the New York Times, I think.
00:12:04
Speaker
I saw his interviews and this guy is the real deal. He's super steady and he came forward with his observations about some objects he saw.
00:12:14
Speaker
And I think this was in 2017 when I first saw his interview. And the first thing that came to mind was, hey, I think I've seen some of these things as well. And I always thought they were military, but now one of these top military pilots, absolutely credible, is basically coming forward and saying that he has no clue what they were. That initially opened up my eyes to the topic in the sense that I was still hesitant, but I decided to
00:12:43
Speaker
read into it a little bit more. I read all the articles from Leslie Keen, I think it was in the New York Times and
00:12:50
Speaker
saw some other interviews with Commander David Traver. And I think in 2018, I saw the first interviews with Louis Elizondo, the former head of ATIP. And I was absolutely blown away because basically this was confirming the story from Leslie Keene. It was confirming the story of Commander David Traver and his fellow pilots. And basically what's
00:13:16
Speaker
The conclusion that I drew is that there was something really interesting going on here. And some of the stuff I've seen in the past might actually not be that easily dismissible as something military or some kind of rocket stuff.
Global Interest in UFOs
00:13:32
Speaker
And actually, yeah, since 2018, I decided to read more and more about the topic.
00:13:38
Speaker
and to basically try to identify the stuff that I've seen in the past because I've seen quite a lot of things from the air which 99% is easily explainable or maybe even later explainable. We have one case, we'll cover it later on, that took me almost maybe eight years to find out what it was but eventually I did find it out. So I was hoping by reading more about the topic to basically come to an easy conclusion and to either dismiss it as a hoax or
00:14:06
Speaker
find some answers to the stuff I've seen and it's been a rabbit hole because since then basically I've found out that this is a major topic for not just the US defense
00:14:21
Speaker
Department of Defense and a lot of Navy pilots. But for many more countries, I believe it's Brazil, Japan, in China even, they're dealing with this phenomena in France. I don't know the task force, I think it's part of CNES, part of the French Space Force that are taking this subject very serious.
00:14:45
Speaker
the Spanish Army is taking very serious. And for me, it's only confirming that what I've seen is maybe more than just a military black budget rocket or whatever it is. So yeah, long story short, I became interested since the interviews with Commander David Traver and Louis Elizondo. And yeah, now we're here. And I can only hope that more pilots will come forward, let's say more,
00:15:13
Speaker
credible observers will come forward with their sightings because I know for a fact that quite a lot of pilots have seen things. Many pilots still think it's something military, it's something mundane and other pilots just simply literally don't want to know. They see something and they say I don't want to know. So if this can be the first step towards more openness about the topic among pilots, civil pilots, credible observers, the better.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so too. I've got a great question here from a friend, Yornay. But before we do that, you mentioned Lou Elizondo there. And before we jumped on the live, I mentioned that I'd spoken to Lou earlier in the week about it, and that he was really impressed that you were coming forward. But one thing I didn't tell you is that I've actually got something. I've got a little message here for you as well. So bear with me when I bring that up. So yeah, I'm going to play this.
00:16:08
Speaker
Hi, Christian, it's Lou Elizondo. I just want to take a brief moment here and thank you sincerely for everything that you're doing in coming forward and having this conversation. We all hear about the military pilots regarding the UAP, but it's not very often that we get the strength and courage from a private pilot to have this conversation. So I want to thank you very much for your courage coming forward, and hopefully one of these days I can make it up to you and buy you a beer or a cup of coffee. Thank you, Christian, goodbye.
00:16:39
Speaker
wow wow that made my day that made my day wow that's amazing fantastic yeah oh yeah wow it's it's that's that's unexpected and it's that's really cool i'm sorry i just brag it on you that was a kind of surprising but um i really hope that it's uh it doesn't feel like um uh how do you say this like uh
00:17:03
Speaker
a huge step for commercial pilots to come forward and we've seen a lot in the last couple of months that some I think some Gulfstream pilots in the US over the Pacific the game became forward with their sightings as well so I really think that's also also thanks to to Mr. Elizondo's interviews and efforts the topic is becoming less fringe and more open and
00:17:27
Speaker
wow with this well i didn't i didn't see that one coming that is really cool that is really cool but i'm looking forward to the day i can shake his hand and thank him also for not just this this this topic but everything else he's done because i realize he's he's more than just a ump topic
00:17:45
Speaker
I'm glad you enjoyed that. It's the very least that I could do. And Lou was the one that suggested it before I even had the chance. So there you go. I'll send that to you as well. So you've got your own little copy of that. Let's jump into this question. Excuse me. I've got a mint in my mouth. From Yorne. So as a fellow duchy, having my own sightings, I know how hard it is to talk to other duchies about this. How was this for you to talk about with fellow pilots, friends, et cetera? And were you actually able to?
Discussions with Fellow Pilots
00:18:14
Speaker
Interesting question. I'm not sure if this person is also a pilot. Normally, I don't discuss these topics with just anyone because honestly, my life is much more than UOP. Actually, this topic is just not something I...
00:18:30
Speaker
even think about discussing with the people. But the topic sometimes comes up with other colleagues. You have to imagine you're flying a 747 from New York to Europe and you're spending six, seven hours over the Atlantic and you're staring at the stars and you're staring at the moonlight with nothing else to do but to talk. Then naturally the topic comes up every now and then.
00:18:58
Speaker
And the interesting thing is that let's say a quarter of the pilots, one third of the pilots, they have actually seen something and they're very reluctant to talk about it. One third of the pilots is just simply not interested, not even dismissing the subject, but simply not interested in it. And some other people, they're simply not willing to talk about it or not open to any kind of subject.
00:19:21
Speaker
So the moment the topic comes up, especially with other pilots, I'm able to talk about it. And it's very interesting because there will be a case we will discuss later on. It was in 2014, I think. It was a case about the red light, so the Pacific Ocean that I've seen. And this went viral. It was just within 24 hours.
00:19:42
Speaker
It was on all the major newspapers and initially I was really afraid that some of my colleagues would radicalize me because even though
00:19:54
Speaker
I never thought that the lights we saw was anything related to aliens or the paranormal or you name it. We actually thought there was a volcano just exploding below us. But the media just made it up as an underwater UFO base that I took pictures of. And when I saw those headlines, I thought, ah, now I'm going to be the laughingstock of the company.
00:20:17
Speaker
But this was far from the case. I never received any radicalizing comments, and actually a lot of my colleagues, veteran pilots, sometimes even ex-military pilots, they came forward with their own theories, with their own experiences, which was really revealing to me that this topic is maybe taboo in society, but
00:20:41
Speaker
really interesting for a lot of pilots and a lot of people are interested in it. So talking about it, I would only talk about if the subject comes up and if people are open for it and if not then just don't even bother because I think if you force a subject on people who are not into it or open to it, especially people who have not read themselves into the subject of
00:21:03
Speaker
have not done their homework, it's still kind of a fringe topic and we have to progress very slowly towards a point that the subject becomes more mainstream, more approachable and once we've reached that point we can finally
00:21:22
Speaker
talk about it with other people who are not yet read into it. So I will just stick to the people who have the same experiences for now and let the conversation flow and let the topic grow naturally.
00:21:35
Speaker
Yeah, completely agree. Everyone has to come at this at their own pace. So yeah, fantastic. Now let's jump into some of these cases.
Analyzing UFO Sightings Critically
00:21:42
Speaker
So what we're going to do for everyone watching and listening, we're going to discuss these cases in chronological order. So starting with the oldest, except for one case, we're going to leave to the end because that's kind of the most intriguing. So it's going to be a mixture of anomalous cases.
00:21:58
Speaker
Well, they all started out anomalous, but some that you've actually done your due diligence and you figured out what they are and you've come up with some prosaic explanations, which I think is a really good sign. It shows that you care about what you're seeing and that you're not just going to jump to conclusions or wild claims that it's a genuine UFO.
00:22:18
Speaker
I think that's what we're going to see from some of these cases. But to start us off, sorry, go on. Yeah, sorry, if I can quickly make a small addition. These are just the most interesting cases that I've seen and most inexplicable sightings. I did not include a lot of really strange things, tiny little things that I've seen that could be very mundane and prosaic, because a couple of times I've seen some stars just disappearing all of a sudden.
00:22:47
Speaker
and I'm gazing out at the star field and I'm just enjoying the view of the Milky Way. It happened maybe two or three times and all of a sudden one of the stars was just disappearing.
00:22:58
Speaker
I've absolutely no explanation for it, but I'm pretty sure it's maybe an atmospheric anomaly or maybe it was even a satellite that was just tumbling and stopped reflecting sunlight. So there are maybe some things I've missed that are really interesting, maybe the only actual genuine thing that I...
00:23:20
Speaker
that I missed and discarded as Proseric. But the stuff that we are going to go through now, I did my best to write down all the details as they came along. I wrote them down in my logbook. And as I said before, you know, only back in 2018, 2019, I started catalyzing them for myself and basically
00:23:46
Speaker
trying to find out what they were. So all the notes, all the locations, all the data, it was written down in my logbook because I just wanted to know what it was. Anyway, let's start. We have a lot of ground to cover. Yeah, so let's jump in with the first one, the falling light, number one. So if you can just tell us, I guess the location and dates, if you've got all of that information and then go through what you saw.
00:24:09
Speaker
Yeah, I'm just sometimes I'm looking down because I have my notes here and all the notes are also in chronological order. Yeah, falling lights. I think that pretty much covers the phenomena. July 2005, we were flying with the Fokker 50, somewhere over southern Germany. It was late evening.
00:24:29
Speaker
It was already dark and we were flying in between two layers of clouds. I was pretty inexperienced still and I didn't have a lot of experience with night flights. We had all the cockpit lights dimmed and all of a sudden I was a co-pilot and I was looking towards my left. I was talking with my captain so I'm basically looking towards the left side of the cockpit and through his windshield, through his window, I suddenly saw a
00:24:55
Speaker
very bright white lights just falling vertically down really fast and as it fell down it was it was going in a constant speed really fast as it fell down it basically dropped through the lower cloud layer it was illuminating the lower cloud layer in for for maybe maybe one or two seconds and it dropped down below and the light disappeared and even my my captain who was more experienced he said
00:25:19
Speaker
no clue what it was and there were no thunderstorms around there was just only these these these really stable layers of stratus clouds no electric magnetic anomalies or
00:25:32
Speaker
activity in the air so I have no clue what it was and yeah this was the first sighting. Needless to say I wasn't able to take any pictures because it happens instantly and it was gone. But this actually closely resembles another incident or another light I saw maybe five years later which we'll cover later on.
00:25:52
Speaker
And this really triggered me into wondering what it actually was because I simply have no clue what it was. And I'm still looking for answers. So this was the first thing that really surprised me from the air. Yeah. And in a case like that, or in that case, did you or your
00:26:12
Speaker
of the main captain, I suppose it was, do you contact air traffic control and ask if there's other traffic or was it just like, don't know what that was, carry on? Yeah, basically just, I don't know what it is, just carry on. Nowadays, I always ask the air traffic control if there's some military activity, if there's any other traffic
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, actually, this was one of the few times that I never asked the air traffic control what it was. Almost all the other cases I was asking. And the funny thing, because it's kind of a small sighting, it's maybe insignificant, but it really triggered me into wondering what's sometimes happening in the sky. And maybe even though it was absolutely insignificant, it triggered my reflex nowadays to write down all the details, what I see and where it was and the date, where it was, etc.
00:27:02
Speaker
and also to proactively just ask air traffic control if there's any military activity or the traffic around. So it's the first one. I know it's kind of underwhelming. I don't think it is. I think it's fantastic. Just a comment here that says, was it over land or sea?
00:27:20
Speaker
This was in southern Germany, it's overland. It was around the city of Nuremberg, which is very far from any lakes, any mountains, anything. There was just absolutely nothing around, and with this Fokker 50 we were flying relatively low, far below regular air traffic, so we're just, as I said, flying in between two air layers, and there was a light just falling vertically down, just bizarre, really strange. Absolutely, that's really, really intriguing.
00:27:48
Speaker
Let's move on to the next one, shall we? Yeah, I'll let you say the name and the date and things like
Mysterious Light Sightings in Europe
00:27:55
Speaker
that.
00:27:55
Speaker
Yeah, this was September 2005. It was either 28th, 29th or 30th. It was a really erratic and fast-moving light in the sky. It happened so fast we weren't able to take any pictures. But what happened, we were flying with this Fokker 50. We were flying for Olympic Airways for this Greek airline. We were flying a lot of island hopping out of Athens. We flew to all these small islands.
00:28:22
Speaker
And we had an evening and a night flight, so we were flying to two or three islands, I think, including the islands of Mykonos. It must have been one of those islands. And we just landed on the runway. And since it's a small airport, we had to make a 180 backtrack on the runway. So that means we basically make a turn of 180 degrees on the runway. And the moment we started turning, the Fokker 50 had really big windows.
00:28:49
Speaker
my both of my colleagues and I we saw a really bright light just
00:28:55
Speaker
basically as bright as a bright planet like Mars or Jupiter you sometimes see in the sky. It appeared, it moved, it disappeared, it reappeared. Yeah, it's difficult to tell you how far, but it was like the width of a full moon. It reappeared again, moved, disappeared, reappeared, and all of a sudden it was stationary for maybe half a second, one second, and it shot away just like instant acceleration. It was not even accelerating.
00:29:23
Speaker
It was like instant speed and it was like a shooting star, but in reverse, it was just going insane speeds. I've never seen anything like this. And this is also one of the things that Commander David Freifer is talking about and Louis Elizondo. And this really, I have no clue what it was. With my background as a pilot and a little bit of aeronautical engineering,
00:29:52
Speaker
I tried to evaluate the distance this object or the light was actually from from us but it's impossible to say because I mean it was just a bright light so you have no dimensions no no no parallax to compare it with.
00:30:06
Speaker
But let's say if it was at a normal altitude of a normal airliner, let's say 30,000 feet, it must have accelerated away with the speed of in excess Mach 20, Mach 30. So that's about 20, 30 times as fast as a normal airliner, 20 times the speed of sound. And maybe that's even a low estimate. If it was even higher, because it's impossible to judge how high it was,
00:30:31
Speaker
But if it was really high, like low Earth orbit, it must have been insane, absolutely insane. And this is the type of characteristic that is being discussed quite often by those military pilots as well.
00:30:46
Speaker
And this was strange. The funny thing was that same evening, we basically concluded that it must have been something military because the carrier strike group, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, I think it was, it was a nuclear aircraft carrier with all the support ships, was just passing by just south of Greece, just on its way to the Persian Gulf. And we just thought, you know, it's probably like
00:31:14
Speaker
some fancy military equipment or missile or something like that. And only later I heard that, this is also thanks to Miss Elizondo and other people that came forward, that many of those
00:31:29
Speaker
lights are being seen near nuclear installations, both nuclear power plants, but also nuclear naval vessels. But even the, I think it was the US's Princeton, this is quite a cruise missile cruiser, I think it was. So there's a lot of strange activity going on around navy ships and nuclear installations.
00:31:52
Speaker
And that actually, in retrospect, makes me wonder what we saw there. And purely mechanical perspective, I cannot explain what it was, because the acceleration was instantaneous. And by the way, when it was appearing, reappearing, disappearing, reappearing, and shooting away, it was still in one continuous light. So it was following the same trajectory. But it seemed to be very unnatural, let's say. What color was it? The light?
00:32:20
Speaker
Just pure white. It was like the size of a small planet like we see normally in the sky, but the behavior was inexplicable.
00:32:36
Speaker
Yeah, and it's funny you mentioned the USS Theodore Roosevelt. That was the ship that was involved in the sightings off of the East Coast in 2015. That's very funny. It's been very easy to kind of make those connections, but it could be purely coincidental, but very interesting point indeed.
00:32:52
Speaker
I didn't realize that because the reason why we knew it was in the flight preparation. We looked through the NOTAMs, which stands for notice to all airmen, which is basically a briefing package which says, you know, this and this beacon is out of service. This part of the airspace is closed. Be careful. There's a tower or an antenna being built there.
00:33:16
Speaker
But it also includes the closure of airspace as there is military activity. And in this case, there was indicated, black and white, that this carrier group was passing by and that there was a whole block of airspace, basically closed for civilian airplanes, as this task group was going by. So that's how we knew there was some military activity going on.
00:33:38
Speaker
but I never linked it to any sort of UAP or it just struck me and I was really wondering you know if this is the kind of jets that these guys are flying and they should make a new kind of top gun because it's like fuck this is real this is this is real equipment but yeah I don't I don't know what to think about it but it was really really mind-blowing and I'm still I'm still hoping to get a prosaic explanation for it because
00:34:04
Speaker
It was clearly not natural. There's no way a natural object can accelerate like that. And no matter what it is, the implications are insane. If this is man-made technology, if this is a black budget rocket or a spaceship or even a drone,
00:34:23
Speaker
Wow, this is groundbreaking technology. This would rewrite the laws of aerodynamics. That would be really cool. And maybe it's something else. I don't know, but I just want to know what it is because it's really from a pilot perspective. It's just nice to see.
00:34:45
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating cases again. So yeah, let's move on to the third anomalous case that we're going to talk about, which is another falling light case.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, that was right. February 28th, 2009. This is also interesting because it greatly resembles the first falling light I've seen. This case I was flying with a 737, Boeing 737 from, I think it was Crete, back to Amsterdam, and it was a daylight flight. Cavalcade weather is like
00:35:17
Speaker
no clouds, visibility was almost unlimited. And we were following the Greek-Albanian coastline and we were just flying towards the northwest. And we were just jetting, just like actually the first time with the falling light. And I was looking towards my captain. And so basically I had the windshield on the left-hand side in full view. And both of us, we saw
00:35:44
Speaker
almost a similar bright white light falling with almost the same speeds straight down and it disappeared in the Adriatic Sea. And if I have to estimate the location, it must have been just over the border between Albania and Greece on the Albanian side.
00:36:03
Speaker
or let's say 15 or 20 kilometers from the coastline into the water. And it just disappeared into the water. I didn't see any splash or flash. It doesn't say anything because we were actually flying so high. I mean, we're talking about 38,000 feet. So it's almost impossible to see any details on the surface of the ocean, but it was falling rapidly. And if I have to estimate the vertical speed,
00:36:32
Speaker
I think it dropped down from our altitudes because that's actually the moment we saw it when it was passing below the window frame and into view. Two seconds from 30,000 feet to sea level, roughly. That's more or less. So that's an insane speed.
00:36:50
Speaker
In this case, I immediately asked the air traffic controller, which was a Greek guy we were still talking to, if there was any military activity in the Adriatic Sea or the airspace ahead of us. First of all, because I thought maybe we overlooked some really important notes or airspace closure, and that's kind of embarrassing if you fly into a closed airspace as a commercial pilot. But no, he was almost kind of agitated. He said, no, no, no activity, just contact whatever it is, the next guy.
00:37:19
Speaker
And we contacted the Albanian air traffic controller. He just cleared us direct to a normal route, which was kind of normal. I immediately asked him as well if there was any military activity. And he was really surprised. He said, no, there's no traffic, no activity, nothing whatsoever happening to the north or to the west of you. So that showed to me that it was at least no commercial traffic, which is kind of a
00:37:47
Speaker
Which would have been kind of strange if it was a falling commercial object. I've got no clue what it was. It was really strange. And if it was a meteor, I've seen millions of meteors and shooting stars. First of all, they burn up high in the atmosphere and if they make it down towards the Earth, they never fall down in a vertical path. They always go down in a shallow path.
00:38:09
Speaker
It was also white light, bright white, so it was not like a burning rock or just something very hot. It was pure white light and it just fell down and it disappeared. Under the ocean, it went straight in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At least this was my perception. Sure, right. Okay, I guess you can't save for certain, but wow.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah, you put yourself, I mean, I put myself in that situation and you just, yeah, that's something else. Yeah. And also, I think it's important to note, and this is not only applicable to this falling light, but basically for me as a pilot, as a trained observer,
00:38:55
Speaker
First of all, I'm only concerned about the safety of my flight and my passengers or the cargo we carry. And the very last thing on my mind is wondering if this is something anomalous or a UAP or something interesting. The only thing I'm interested in is, does it affect my flight path? Does it affect my airplane? Is it something weather related that we have to avoid?
00:39:21
Speaker
Is it some other traffic maybe that we that we have to keep in mind? So that's the way I'm always looking out of my window. That's the way I interpret my instruments and I'm flying my airplane. And I think this is very important for people to remember that I guess a lot of people will start complaining. So he doesn't have any pictures. It's only anecdotal evidence or any evidence. It's just anecdotes. So yeah.
00:39:45
Speaker
But I'm there to fly the airplane. I'm sitting in the cockpit. I'm being paid to fly the airplane as safe as possible. So the last thing on my mind is taking pictures when there's something going on because I have to be in my role as a pilot. So it's also very good to keep in mind that every time I see something like that, I'm not instantly jumping to conclusions like, well, this must be interesting or this must be
00:40:13
Speaker
an alien from Zathirul, what's it called? Zathirutikulai. Yeah, that one. No, pretty far from it. And actually, I doubt if any of these things are relatable to aliens.
00:40:30
Speaker
Yeah, so I just want to have it cleared up that for me as a pilot, and this applies to all the pilots, both military and commercially, we're there with a mission. It's either a military mission or we're there to operate the flight. So just to take away any doubts for people that think that I'm jumping to conclusions here or there.
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I'd just like to say as well, we're now going to start looking at some sightings which you have captured images of. But I mean, one thing I'll say about the first three is it sounds like even if you were to want to take a photograph of those things, it happened almost in an instant or over a couple of seconds. Even if you'd done what you needed to do in the cockpit, am I writing saying by the time you got your camera, it would have just been no point anyway.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah. And it also makes me wonder how much I missed because I'm flying now for 20 years. And for anyone who's ever visited a cockpit of an airliner, the windows are actually kind of small. And we're sitting there, most of the time we're looking inside because we're literally flying on instruments. Either we're talking with each other, we're doing the radio. And the time I'm actually looking outside through these relatively small windows is kind of limited. So sometimes I'm wondering, you know, maybe I've missed the most,
00:41:41
Speaker
spectacular phenomena outside and I've never even noticed it. So these are just a handful of things that I've seen and yeah I can testify that I cannot explain what I've seen so far. Now the first case that we're going to look at here that you you know it's certainly very strange but you have figured it out in the end I think is the red lights over the Pacific is this the one you mentioned earlier that kind of went viral and appeared in the news so yeah if you want to talk us through this one that's going to be interesting.
Identified Phenomena and Misidentifications
00:42:09
Speaker
Yeah, just feel free to show the pictures as we discuss it. This was in the night of 24th and 25th of August 2014. I was flying an airplane from Hong Kong to Anchorage. We were flying over the Pacific Ocean for about nine and a half, ten hours straight. That very night we had a briefing package both for the weather and the no temps. There was some military activity going on. I think the Americans were testing
00:42:39
Speaker
hypersonic missile out of the Aleutian Islands, southern Alaska. And there were a lot of erupting volcanoes that fly. They were erupting basically around the so-called Ring of Fire, the Pacific Ring of Fire. So there were volcanoes erupting in southern Japan, in Indonesia, Alaska, North America. At least we had a couple of earthquakes in North America.
00:43:04
Speaker
volcanoes erupting in South America. So we were pretty well-informed about possible ash clouds and all the stuff that we might encounter as pilots there. Most of these ash stems, as they are called, or the warnings about volcanic activity, it comes from satellite data or pilot reports. So if I sometimes see
00:43:27
Speaker
something anomalous like a volcano exploding or erupting, we have to report it because sometimes we're just the first ones or the only ones to see it. So we were really on the lookout for anything that might endanger our flight, like flying in an ash cloud, which is basically very dangerous.
00:43:44
Speaker
All of a sudden, I think about three hours in flight, we were flying north of Japan, just far east of Kamchatka. We dimmed all the lights and this was typical one of those evenings that we were talking about the universe and life and you name it.
00:44:00
Speaker
cars and i just had my meal in the oven and i was waiting for it to finish and we were just looking out for the stars and all of a sudden on the horizon we saw a very bright flash of light which is which completely surprised us because we we had no clue where it
00:44:20
Speaker
where it came from. Yeah, this was basically the view as we saw with the naked eye. And around the area of the red lights in the far distance, there was this really, really bright flash of light. But there were no thunderstorms reported. There were no thunderstorms on our weather radar, et cetera. And it really triggered our imagination, wondering what it was. And about half an hour later, or maybe 10 minutes later, we saw this glow on the horizon appearing. And these red lights basically started to
00:44:49
Speaker
show up as we came closer. It was pure coincidence that they were just below our flight path. So we basically approached them at all. We flew over it. And I still have no clue if it's connected to the bright flash of light. Maybe it's probably completely unrelated.
00:45:06
Speaker
But we were baffled and we had no clue what was going on. Flying there and keep in mind we were on the lookout for volcanoes and ash clouds and you name it. We were really spooked when we saw this because our first reaction was there's like a
00:45:24
Speaker
magnetic undersea eruption or there's some volcano blowing off steam or something is happening there that might endanger our airplane. But as we came closer, we saw that these lights, these individual lights, they were completely steady. They were not burning. They were not flickering like you would see with the forest fires sometimes. They even had green and white lights.
00:45:47
Speaker
That was really strange but still our hearts were beating in our throats because we were just so afraid of flying into an ash cloud. So basically we decided to maintain our course and to stay clear of any possible clouds or weather and just let the lights be what they were. I took a lot of pictures of it and after uploading them the next day they went viral and this was crazy what happened then.
00:46:18
Speaker
The funny thing is, for people wondering how big these lights are, I don't know if I sent you the picture as well. But two days later, I was flying from Anchorage to Chicago. We were overflying Canada, the city of Winnipeg, I think. And we were flying at exactly the same altitude at night. And I took a similar picture over the city of Winnipeg. And you can actually compare the size between the city and the group of lights.
00:46:48
Speaker
Do you happen to have it with you there? That's it, yeah. So top is the picture with the red light, so the Pacific. We were flying, I don't know, it must have been let's say 32,000 feet and below we were flying at the same altitude and that's the city of Winnipeg which is about 20 or 25 kilometers in diameter.
00:47:10
Speaker
So taking that into account you can see that the spread of the red group of lights is about 30 to 35 kilometers in total and each individual light is about the size of a football stadium.
00:47:26
Speaker
Yeah, so for a long time I had no clue what it was. Up to roughly six months, seven months ago, apparently another pilot took pictures of these red lights and they have now been identified as being a Chinese fishing fleet, which is fishing for sari.
00:47:46
Speaker
And even though I think the lights are still pretty big for fishing fleets, I think it's kind of explained by now. Because I think it was also last year, there were some pictures taken in the port of Shanghai, and the entire sky was glowing red. And they were basically explained as being a fishing fleet testing their lights. And that explained to me the red glow.
00:48:09
Speaker
And maybe it's good to mention the main reason why I didn't think it was a fishing fleet to begin with, because fishing fleets always use white or green light, because the white and green wavelengths actually do penetrate seawater. And red light doesn't penetrate seawater at all. So it doesn't make sense to hunt for fish or to try and catch fish, because fish are simply not attracted to it from what I read in the literature.
00:48:38
Speaker
Six months ago I found out that actually what they try to do is not lure those fish in but to calm them because the fish don't see the light so they need illumination for the fishing nets and for the operation. So apparently the fish get really calm and cozy when they see those red lights and they're easier to fish out of the ocean.
00:48:59
Speaker
Long story short it was fun while it lasted but I think it's kind of explained as a mundane and interesting site but nothing to get excited about. Yeah but I think one of the reasons why we and like we said earlier that we're showing these cases that have been figured out is that it shows the work that you're putting in after seeing something you know it really does highlight that you're not just jumping to conclusions and
00:49:24
Speaker
The case that you mentioned about the sky going red last year, I remember that popping up all over the UFO community with all sorts of theories attached to it. It can happen that people just go for the wildest explanations first.
00:49:41
Speaker
It's great. It's really good. So let's move on to the next one, which I believe... If you don't mind, what's really interesting with these red lights is that I received literally maybe a thousand emails from people all over the world. Some people going completely mental with their own philosophies about the paranormal, which was kind of interesting to read.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't really do anything with it. But I also received some emails from some scientists, including a couple of American and Russian scientists. And they saw the explanation for their theories in my pictures.
00:50:23
Speaker
that there is some sort of a possible electrical discharge between the upper parts of the atmosphere and the lower parts of the atmosphere because apparently, don't quote me on it because I'm not an expert on it, but with thunderstorms there's a lot of electro-magnetical discharge I think from the ground to the air or the other way around and some scientists are wondering how nature or how the planet is rebalancing those kind of magnetic
00:50:53
Speaker
anomalies. So they proposed that there must be some kind of a phenomenon here and there that's actually balancing out the electro-magnetical discharge or charge from the upper atmosphere to the ground.
00:51:07
Speaker
Really interesting, but then again, we found out it's just a bunch of fishing fleets. But this also made me wonder if this could maybe potentially explain the falling lights I've seen earlier. It seems highly unlikely to me because it's far from the lightning strike, but I don't know. Anyway, that was interesting to see. But among all those emails, and this was pretty cool,
00:51:28
Speaker
There was a forwarded email by someone else who was trying to find out what it was. And I saw that the original email came from his buddy working for BAE, British Aerospace Engineering, the British weapon manufacturer. And so he deleted the name, but I could still see it was coming from a senior weapons analyst in BAE Aerospace. And then I realized that my pictures, they were not only going viral among the UFO community and
00:51:59
Speaker
the pilot community, but they have been taken very serious by weapon analysts and that was pretty cool. So I realized that my pictures sometimes taken from the air are really valuable because I'm sitting in a unique position. So you can imagine the jokes around the breakfast table among all the pilots, you know, saying, you know, Obama just wakes up and the first thing he gets on his desk.
00:52:21
Speaker
It's a briefing package with the red lights taken by Dutch pilots. So, yeah, this was the red lights incident and it really showed me not only how some things can be explained very pro-zericky, because I was going through many theories myself, and in the end it just happened to be a stupid fishing fleet, but it showed also to me that a lot of people are interested in these kind of sightings, so it was kind of encouraging to me.
00:52:50
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. As a last note before we continue, initially, as I said before, I was really afraid that my colleagues would actually make fun of me or try to radicalize it. Far from it, far from it. And this incident triggered a lot of my colleagues to come forward with their own stories as well.
00:53:12
Speaker
I have to leave it up to my colleagues to come forward with their own testimonies, et cetera. But some of the stories that some of my colleagues and I'm talking about really experienced pilots have told me are baffling, absolutely baffling. And yeah, it doesn't really help anything for the conversation if I start to tell those stories. But it showed to me that a lot of pilots are seeing stuff. And I think it's, in a sense, it was nice to see people opening up.
00:53:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And it's good to know that it is happening. And, you know, anyone's welcome to come forward. And I appreciate that some have many reasons why they don't want to. But, you know, and if you ever mention it, they're always welcome here. We can always talk a lot beforehand. So, you know, I always like to put that out there. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah. Moving on. We've got the space debris. Which these photographs are
00:54:13
Speaker
And this is also something that's been seen more and more often since more and more space debris is basically burning up nowadays. And I've seen, yeah, exactly. I've seen quite a lot of posts on social media here and there of moving images of this space debris, and it looks absolutely mesmerizing.
00:54:34
Speaker
lot of people are immediately jumping to conclusions like all this is starlink this is this is aliens this is ufos and this is really something very mundane is basically an old rocket parts burning up in the upper atmosphere i never expected this one it was really cool we were flying let me see it was may twenty eight.
00:54:53
Speaker
In 2017, we were flying between Africa and South America in the mid-Atlantic ocean. As you can see, I had a camera already ready to capture the Milky Way and some shooting stars, and we were talking about the universe and all kinds of funny things.
00:55:10
Speaker
And all of a sudden from the corner of my eye, I was sitting on the right hand seat, from the corner of my eye, I see we're being overtaken by another airplane. And this shouldn't be because we were completely alone over the ocean. I realized, wait a minute, there's something going on because it's much higher than we are and it's glowing and there's something off here. And I was looking at it and this is a 30 second exposure. So it shows it as a blurry long line, but it was like a big bowl of
00:55:41
Speaker
a glowing ball with all sorts of debris and parts falling off and burning up in the ocean as it went along. It was really cool to see and fortunately we both immediately identified it as some space debris burning up. We had no clue what it was and it was visible for about one and a half minutes and it was just going over across the horizon and burning up in the atmosphere.
00:56:07
Speaker
This was pretty cool. It took me about a week to get the final answer on what kind of space debris it was and there was one gentleman, I should have written down his name, I forgot his name, but as a hobby he is tracking all sorts of space debris and he saw my pictures, he contacted me and he said well this really resembles the Chinese rocket booster from
00:56:31
Speaker
whatever, which was launched five or six years earlier. And it was just orbiting the Earth. And basically, it's a matter of time before it's it slowly starts descending towards parts of the atmosphere where it's getting more and more friction.
00:56:47
Speaker
and eventually burning up in maybe two or three minutes time. And it's impossible to say where it will exactly hit the point that it starts breaking up or burning up, because it's just so unpredictable with tumbling around and atmospheric changes. So, yeah, it was identified. I could almost identify the type of rocket it was, and that was it.
00:57:11
Speaker
And I took this picture just after the incident. This is the instruments, the navigation display. And on the lower left-hand corner, you see the GPS coordinates as well. Just trying to say you logged it. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's interesting. It kind of links into a degree with this question from Blue Eyes. And thank you for the $5 donation and becoming a member, Blue Eyes. Thank you so much. He's asking if you've confirmed any of the sightings with radar operators as well.
00:57:42
Speaker
No, no, unfortunately not. In the sense that I've asked many radar operators or air traffic controllers if they see anything on radar. We will go in more detail with the last case, the case over Spain, because that's actually an interesting
00:58:00
Speaker
story about air traffic controllers. The big point is people have to realize that nowadays air traffic control, both military and civil, I think it's also military, they use a system that's not using primary radar. So in the old days, let's say the
00:58:19
Speaker
the first years of radar usage they were using a radar signal and every time it was bouncing back from an object there was like a ping there was something showing up on the radar display nowadays because there's so much clutter there birds it's weather it's like so much stuff going on
00:58:37
Speaker
Modern air traffic control works with a radar that's sending out a signal, and the moment that the transponder in the airplane receives that signal, it sends all sorts of data back. And only those kind of radar responses are being plotted on the radar chart. So nowadays, an air traffic controller, they do not have an old radar display that shows all the objects in the sky. It just shows the airplanes with a specific transponder setting back on the radar display.
00:59:05
Speaker
And this is very important to keep in mind, because the radar operator, like an air traffic controller, they probably don't see any objects in the airspace that don't have a man-made, aviation-approved transponder. I think it might be different for military operators, and I think we've seen also with the testaments from Commander David Traver and the Navy incidents, that despite two radars, they were picking up objects,
00:59:32
Speaker
I think it was a radar ceiling 80,000 feet up to sea level. So these kind of radars are very sophisticated and they work on a completely different
00:59:44
Speaker
system logic so I cannot say anything about military aircraft radars but normally air traffic control they can only say if they're aware of military traffic going on so yeah that's that's kind of a useless source but at least it sometimes it can confirm there's some man-made equipment flying around playing around
01:00:05
Speaker
Yeah absolutely, I appreciate that. So let's move on to the ICBM launch, if that's all right. I'll just quickly say thank you Shelly again for the $10, you guys are awesome, so generous, thank you so much. Right, let me bring up these, oh Christopher, plane, how's it going? There you go, military still use traditional radar that plots all physical objects they see. Awesome, thank you for clarifying, good to see you Christopher.
01:00:31
Speaker
Right, yes. What we got, did I say it's the ICBM launch? And the one thing I will say is that these photographs, even though they're Prozac explanations, they're still absolutely stunning looking at those cloud fields, star fields. Sorry, it's just phenomenal. And this is certainly bizarre. Let's bring this one up and then you can explain it. Yeah.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, it looks like one of those pins from Google Earth, literally placed on Earth, you know. Yeah, this was pretty cool. This was over northern China, and this was a planned rocket test. And we knew it already beforehand because there was an airspace closure just north of our route and much further south of our route. So we knew there was some
01:01:22
Speaker
some launch or some kind of activity going on but we were really surprised to actually see it popping up like this so as you can see the sun was already setting it was actually it was already set below the horizon and there was only this this this glow of the atmosphere left and all of a sudden we saw this pin just rising up and it was going pretty fast and
01:01:45
Speaker
Yeah, basically, yeah. So this is the first stage that's been burning up. And as it grows higher and higher, the ambient air pressure is decreasing. So the exhaust gases start expanding. And you see nowadays with these SpaceX launches, we see this huge plume. It's basically because of the very low ambient air pressure that the plume is just expanding rapidly. And if you go to the next picture. Next one.
01:02:14
Speaker
Yeah, here you see that the second stage is starting the ignition already. So for me, when I saw this with the two different plumes, it was clear that it was a rocket. And yeah, we immediately knew what it was and we were just enjoying the view because it was pretty cool to see. Yeah, absolutely. And is this cloud layer here?
01:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, cloud layer, it's just hidden in the shadows because it's basically already night and the only light we see is from the sun that's already behind the horizon. It is, like you said, it's absolutely stunning to look at. Yeah, I suppose if you knew that straight away, there's not much to follow up on that one.
01:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's good then that you actually are told in advance of things that are happening nearby, whether it be ICBM launches and rocket tests and things like that. You always get that information, so that's really handy.
01:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, even though sometimes the briefing package of NOTAMs, which is almost like this big, so you go through it a little bit, yeah, okay, okay, we find out, and sometimes you miss something, because basically what we look for is all the information that's relevant to our flight path and routes, and sometimes with rocket launches like these, they're in a NOTAM package, a briefing package, just that's talking about
01:03:28
Speaker
completely different country where we're not even flying so sometimes I'm not always reading up on all the note times but in this case it was a it was a clear case of uh enjoy the show and uh sit back we're sitting
01:03:43
Speaker
One thing we've not really gone into so far is the kind of equipment that you've been using camera-wise. So far we've obviously had the red light over the Pacific, the space debris and then this ICBM launch. So what kind of cameras were you using and lenses as well? I'm not sure if I can mention the brand but I'll just do it anyway. I'm solely using Nikon.
01:04:03
Speaker
And I started basically from the time I was flying in Afghanistan etc. with the D80, which is a very small DSLR camera. And over the years I upgraded from the D80 to the D200 to the D800, D850 and now I'm using the Z7, which is a mirrorless eye-end camera, really some of the best actually there are.
01:04:28
Speaker
I'm using mostly professional high-grade lenses, so I'm using 2.8 lenses. Sometimes I take pictures with the fisheye, like the rocket debris burning up, and also the red lights I took with the 10.5mm, 2.8mm.
01:04:43
Speaker
which is an extreme wide-angle lens, and I'm mostly using the 14-24 wide-angle lens for the photography nerds, it's probably no material, but it's really great stuff. And I also carry the 24-17mm 2.8mm with me.
01:05:01
Speaker
The big problem is with photography from the cockpit, we have to take pictures through really, really thick layered class, sometimes six layers. And it's like, it's impossible to get sharp pictures if you zoom in too far, which when I started taking pictures from the cockpit was a huge disappointment because there's so many beautiful things to see, especially mountain ridges in the background, etc. But I basically forced myself to use wide angle lenses
01:05:29
Speaker
because by using wide-angle lenses, you avoid the distortion of the windows. So long story short, I'm using these wide-angle lenses to take pictures from the cockpit. And yeah, that's the equipment I carry with me now. Yeah, and I will just reiterate to everybody to please go and check out Christian's Instagram accounts and that where he puts so many beautiful and stunning photographs. Before we jump on to this next case, I thought this one was
01:05:59
Speaker
kind of amusing. It says, publish a book. Well, you know, I think you've got two books out, haven't you? Yeah, actually, the first book came out in 2016. It's called Cargo Pilots, because I'm flying cargo. And it was funny. I met the author of my book.
01:06:20
Speaker
And only later I realized he wasn't sorry, I'm at the publisher of my book, and only later I realized he was a publisher. And he told me, you know, actually, you have so many cool stories, let's make a book about it. The problem is, I expect it will be an audience.
01:06:35
Speaker
net audience worldwide of 200 aviation nerds that might be interested in it but let's just go for it because he's a publisher in a niche market of aviation books so we came up with a great design and the book was selling like crazy I think it's already in the fifth print run now and since I upgraded to Captain last year we decided to make the fifth print run the Captain's edition
01:06:59
Speaker
which is out now and it basically covers my whole career from flying the Fokker in Afghanistan and Africa all the way to flying the 747 and it's mainly focusing on flying the 747, the airplane, the destinations, the clouds, the northern lights you name it and also one chapter is dedicated to the red lights of the Pacific and keep in mind it was written the moment we were still wondering what it was so
01:07:24
Speaker
A new edition will actually come up with a solution of the fishing fleet. But yeah, the book is out. And actually, as we speak, I'm...
01:07:33
Speaker
I'm busy with coming up with a new book because I want to expand my photography into more books and stuff but it takes so much time and energy and it's the two things I really like right now. It will come up in the future but one book is already out and people can find it on my webshop if they want to but I don't want to talk about these kind of things like books etc because I don't want to muddy the waters and I just want to
01:08:02
Speaker
In this interview, at least, I just want to focus on the anomalies and the weird and interesting things that we sometimes see in the air. I understand completely. I understand. I just mentioned it because that comment was like... Yeah, cool. Yeah, let's move on then. This one is the cosmic ray.
Cosmic Ray Streak and Space Debris
01:08:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's... Go for it.
01:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, this is an interesting one as well. Actually because it's so underwhelming. The picture was taken April 5th, 2020 over the North Atlantic. And I was, I think during that flight alone, I took maybe 50 or 60 pictures. This is the raw picture as it came from my camera. And I just put them on my computer and I never had time to look at them anymore.
01:08:56
Speaker
until about, I think, six months or seven months ago. And I was going through these pictures with the moon and I was looking for some stuff to work on. And when browsing through these pictures, I just noticed this little light streak in only one of those. I took maybe six pictures in a time span of 20 seconds. And this was the only one that had the little light streak in it. And I think there's also one where I zoomed in on the little light streak.
01:09:28
Speaker
Yeah and I have no clue what it was because I took so many pictures after each other and as I said from a whole series of five or six pictures this was the only one with this little light streak in it. I didn't see it with the naked eye and as I said you know I only noticed it on the file two years later.
01:09:47
Speaker
I posted it online asking my followers what they think it was. And a lot of people already commented that it might have been a cosmic ray, which might have well been. It's one of those high energy particles shooting through the universe at all times.
01:10:02
Speaker
Most of them are filtered out by the Earth atmosphere, but some are actually coming through, and if they hit a center of a camera, they just show up as these little light streaks. And sometimes you hear it from pilots, but also especially astronauts that are venturing above the largest mass of the atmosphere. You see these little light flashes in your eyes, and astronauts have it more often. Apollo astronauts have it a lot as well, because they were so far out of the Earth's protective
01:10:32
Speaker
magnetosphere, but yeah, I think it's one of those particles that just hit the sensor and left this little light streak. As we speak, this image is being analyzed by Epaco. I'm probably butchering the French words. Epaco is a part of, actually is run by the same people who are working in Guypond, which is the French organization to identify aerial anomalies. They're part of the French Space Force, the Defense Force, I think.
01:11:02
Speaker
I'm in contact with Mr. Antonio Cuisine, probably butchering his name but my apologies for that. He was interested in the red lights already and he's now working to analyze both this image and the Spanish image we're going to talk about in the end. He already confirmed that it's highly likely a cosmic ray but they find it such a nice example that they want to use this picture in their database as a
01:11:30
Speaker
as a gold standard for what a cosmic ray in the sky with a picture looks like. So a final analysis is being done and we just have to wait for the report to come out. But I thought it was interesting to show because some people might just jump to conclusions and say, oh, it's aliens or it's, I don't know, UFOs, but I think it's,
01:11:55
Speaker
It's also good to include those very mundane anomalies from camera sensors as well. Yeah, absolutely. It's a beautiful image. Absolutely so. Fantastic. Let's jump across. So we've got two more before we get to the final one. Diffuse light over Germany, a moving light. Now, I think this is the one that we've got a video for as well that you've shared with me on YouTube. Is that the one? Yeah.
01:12:24
Speaker
So let's watch the video first. Sorry, everyone. I've got multiple screens. So I'm flip-flopping from all sides of the thing. Here we go. Let's watch this. This is it. Yeah.
01:12:48
Speaker
This is a series of maybe 30 or 40 pictures I took with the wide-angle lens, basically letting it rest on the glare shield against the front window of the airplane. So the black part you see on the right-hand and the lower corner is basically the nose of the airplane and the window frame.
01:13:07
Speaker
And all of a sudden we saw this. Yeah, this is a nice indication of how I position my camera. Those are the instruments below and that's my camera just pointing up. And I always call it a fire and forget camera. So I just press a button and I'll just let it take 50 pictures. And hopefully there's a shooting star or a nice Milky Way visible in the end.
01:13:30
Speaker
that's the setup and that's how I took these pictures and all of a sudden flying over southern Germany we saw this this really bright light popping up from the left hand corner and it was starting to glow it was pure white by the way just a white balance on the camera that's making it look greenish
01:13:48
Speaker
But the light became kind of diffused and it started to glow as it basically moved towards the north. And I've seen the ISS also millions of times and I knew this was not the standard orbit of the ISS.
01:14:04
Speaker
And we were really wondering what it was because there were no NOTAMs, there was no message or information about any rocket launches or space debris, you name it. So I was kind of clueless and I was really wondering what we saw there. I was pretty
01:14:21
Speaker
pretty sure and convinced that what we saw was some sort of a re-entry of something, especially the diffuse glow around it, made me realize it was probably a de-orbit, like you sometimes see with SpaceX boosters as well, but it was on a trajectory that didn't make any sense. So I posted it online and fortunately the next day, or maybe two days later, there was one gentleman, Jonathan, I forgot his name, you see it probably in the next
01:14:51
Speaker
Yeah, that one. And he wasn't even aware of my sighting. And he was keeping track of this Angara AMD orbit, apparently a Russian booster. And he drew that line. That was the red line on the left. That's the actual track that the D orbit made. And it completely corresponds with the sighting that we had.
01:15:19
Speaker
and this is also interesting because it shows that we were flying over the Alps just southern Germany around Austria and it kind of shows how far the object is away from us looking at the red line on the track line on the European map so
01:15:37
Speaker
that also shows how much we can actually see from the cockpit. So this object, it was probably maybe two and a half thousand kilometers away when it started to deorbit and it was clearly visible to all of us. In this case, I also contacted the air traffic controller asking if there was any military activity or anything going on. He was not aware of any military activity and he was just not interested.
01:16:03
Speaker
And it makes sense because the object was so high in the sky and it was the orbit of something that probably came in the ocean just around Spitzberg or something. So it makes sense that the German air traffic controller was not aware of it. Yeah, that's amazing. Again, it's just another fascinating photograph even having a prosaic explanation. So yeah, another great case.
01:16:28
Speaker
Now, one more, I think, of these. And this is one that I think is quite important because these often get mistaken for UFOs or anomalous things. And this is Starlink satellites. So we've got a couple of images here.
01:16:41
Speaker
So yeah, if you want to talk us through them. I mean, what's that been like since they've become a thing in the sky? Is it something you have seen a lot of times? Yeah, many times, many times. The first time I saw them, it was actually from my own backyard. It's really fascinating to know that something is so high up in the sky, and it looks so weird, so this little train of lights. Then I saw them a couple of times from the air as well, and it's so easy to identify them as
01:17:11
Speaker
as man-made and as or at least as probably man-made and in this case also Starlink satellites. It's not only the little train of lights which is typical for Starlink but also the speed and the way they move. It's typical for a man-made object in low earth orbit.
01:17:29
Speaker
So let's say three or four hundred kilometers high. It's just like the ISS. It always moves at a constant speed. Basically because of orbital mechanics you can calculate the speed per altitude and the lowest low Earth stable orbit is around four. I think 350 or 450 kilometers. So you see on the speed and the really constant trajectory that it's a man-made object in low Earth orbit and
01:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, it's a pretty common sight and nowadays actually in general, satellites are very common. There are countless of satellites in the air and Starlink is really one of the typical ones that really show up. A couple of times people tell me, so when you see something interesting from the Earth, it's probably Starlink.
01:18:16
Speaker
I think most of the interesting stuff I've seen was in the beginning years of my career, all before SpaceX was even founded. For me, as a pilot, I recognize the ISS. I know myself a lot, and I know Starling. I just included these pictures just to show that there are some really mundane and prosaic things as well, which are pretty cool at the moment, I'd like to see.
01:18:43
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, fantastic, great photographs, those stars, it's just the beauty of it all that is amazing to look at. Right then, let's move on to this Spain case because this is one that you really laid out in detail.
Cigar-Shaped Object Over Spain
01:19:00
Speaker
And we've had it here behind us for the whole time with this very, very small object that you can see here.
01:19:06
Speaker
A little easter egg. A little easter egg yeah and I put out the photograph today on my on the little article that the sort of companion article I did alongside this interview um and yeah so let's bring up let's start I mean to everyone this is gonna just look like a normal sky and this is the first image that you took isn't it I can't even see
01:19:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's just literally the raw image as it came from the camera, no editing, nothing. I mean, that's, again, and yeah, when you zoom in, it's not obviously not that clear. It's so underwhelming. I'm the first to admit, it's extremely underwhelming. But the context around it, it's making the image interesting. Yes, absolutely.
01:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, so this is the image, this is the Spain image. Let me see, this was January 23rd, 2010. I was still taking pictures with my Nikon D200, which is almost a potato in comparison with my present equipment.
01:20:12
Speaker
I just wished I had better equipment back then, but that's how it is. We were flying with Boeing 737 from Amsterdam to Malaga in the southern part of Spain. And as you can see, it was just after sunset. The clouds, you can see actually in the formation of the clouds, it's all layered. It's very stable weather. There's no thunderstorms. There's not a lot of vertical activity in the sky. There's no, no, no, no.
01:20:38
Speaker
CBs or thunderstorms or cumulus clouds, you name it. We entered the Spanish airspace and the moment we contacted Madrid air traffic control, they controlled the upper airspace in Spain, the controller cleared us direct to position Creesa, which is just north of Malaga.
01:20:58
Speaker
So, in other words, we were clear to leave the official airways and just continue in a direct line to the airport of Malaga, which saves us time and fuel and that makes life much easier. That was also because we were the only airplane in the sky, more or less, especially in those altitudes, because the airspace is closed, sorry, is empty, it could clear us direct to one of those points and everyone is happy.
01:21:24
Speaker
So it was still about 15 minutes of flying left, if I'm not mistaken, 45, 50 minutes. And we were already about 10 minutes direct course to Malaga when my colleague, my captain, ex Navy pilot, he suddenly asked me if I see the same little thing in the sky. So I started to look outside and I saw this little dark object as well.
01:21:49
Speaker
And for about 10 minutes, we were really wondering what we were seeing because we were flying at 41,000 feet, which is even for commercial traffic quite high. There is commercial traffic that's flying higher than us, mostly small business jets like Gulf Streams and you name it. But most airliners, most passenger airliners, they fly much lower.
01:22:16
Speaker
And the object we saw, as you can see, it's clearly above the horizon and it's above us, pretty far above us. And it's within the atmosphere. Objects that are outside of the atmosphere, they will reflect light. So let's say if you see another planet or you see the ISS or Starlink, they only show up because they reflect the light from either the moon or the sun. So they show up as a bright spot.
01:22:40
Speaker
but if it's within our atmosphere it will basically block the light so you will see the shadow side of the object and this object as you can clearly see it's within our atmosphere because you see the shadow side of it yeah and it had a really weird shape this is also the shape as i would see it with the naked eye mind you i normally i wear glasses so
01:22:59
Speaker
Maybe that's why it's a bit blurry, but this is the exact shape as we saw with the naked eye. So for almost 50 minutes we were flying straight to Malaga and this object was smacked dead-home, far ahead of us, just directly in our line of sight.
01:23:18
Speaker
and it didn't move. It didn't move laterally, left or right of our track. It didn't seem to move towards us so far from it. It didn't move up and down. It was completely and absolutely stable. And
01:23:33
Speaker
Since we saw it exactly the same size, same shape and same position for almost one hour straight from almost the northern part of Spain to almost 20,000 feet in the descent into Malaga, it didn't change at all. So either it was pretty far ahead of us and it was just moving at the same speed or it must have been a massive object, absolutely fucking massive, really, really, really far ahead of us.
01:23:59
Speaker
So we were just contemplating about it and wondering and I decided to ask the Spanish military, sorry the Spanish air traffic controller if there was any traffic ahead of us because we've never seen such a strange airplane before and he immediately told me that no we were the only one as far as he knew in the airspace 40 000 feet or above
01:24:20
Speaker
and he was wondering what we saw so I explained to him we see this object it's there already for 10 minutes and seems to be a pretty big airplane ahead of us and immediately and this was really interesting he immediately asked me to contact the military air traffic controller the Spanish military air traffic controller on a dedicated frequency so my captain he took over the radio just so no more traffic controller
01:24:42
Speaker
and I took the second VHF radio and I got a dedicated frequency and I started calling the military air traffic controller and this guy was absolutely interested in what we saw he was not dismissing it he was he was not telling me ah what you see is a swamp gas or no he was he was absolutely interested in what we saw so I explained it to him and
01:25:05
Speaker
He confirmed to me that there was absolutely no civil or military traffic or objects in the sky, no weather balloons, absolutely nothing. And he was really interested in what we saw. And yeah, I have no clue if they did anything with it. I never filed a report. I have no clue what I could do or should do with something like this.
01:25:29
Speaker
But what struck me is that we, first of all, we saw it for over an hour. It must have been ahead of us, high. It didn't change any lateral or vertical. How do you say this? It didn't change the position from us at all. And it must have been within our atmosphere. Plus, it was confirmed to me by the military and the civil air traffic controller, there was absolutely no traffic over Spain.
01:25:58
Speaker
So that leaves me wondering what it is. I never took this picture very serious I must say. I have it in my database like all my pictures and I was thinking about it every once in a while just hoping to get an explanation for maybe a military test flight or anything funny. Up to the, as I said before, up to the
01:26:21
Speaker
interviews of Commander David Fraver and later on Mr. Elizondo. And I realized that there might be more to this picture than I initially thought, especially because Air Traffic Controller confirmed to us there was no traffic. Long story short, I've asked Mr. Antonio Cuisine from Epaco to analyze this image as well.
01:26:43
Speaker
And as we speak, the image is being analyzed and now analyzing also the clouds in the foreground to try and get a distance versus size measurement on the object. It might take a while because Mr. Kuzin is very busy. He's also working for Guypond and they have a couple of really big cases they're working on. By the way, he might be an interesting guest for your
01:27:12
Speaker
show as well because these guys are very down to earth and they make a living out of analyzing these images professionally. But yeah, he's very interested in this image and he's now processing it. And the moment the report comes out, I will let you know and see what it is. But yeah, I have no clue what it is. And this one, yeah, I bought an AI image enhancer because sometimes I have some really crappy pictures taken with a potato that I want to enhance.
01:27:40
Speaker
And I decided to basically let the AI do its work on this object as well. So this is not the photo as it came out of the camera. This was just enhanced with a digital image enhancer. I just let it run its automatic algorithm and it came up with this. So this is an image enhancement.
01:28:02
Speaker
done by the computer based on AI. And I'm not sure if it's showing the actual object. And I've shown this AI file to Mr. Kozen as well. And he was very interested in this shape and size. It looks like a cigar shape with rounded edges. That's also what we saw with the naked eye.
01:28:28
Speaker
It doesn't look like a contrail. Sometimes when there's an aircraft ahead of you, you look in the back of its contrail, especially if it's a heavy airplane like a triple or a seven-four, you see the typical two circles dissipating slowly. Well, normally you see them for maybe two or three minutes if you fly behind them and then they dissipate or they completely change because contrails constantly dissipate and grow depending on the air density
01:28:56
Speaker
the air density, the temperature and the saturation of the air. In this case it was stable and it doesn't look at all like a contrail we're looking at.
01:29:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's a mystery we have to find a solution for right now. And I'm really looking forward to the final report from Epaco to see what they come up with. I would love to know what it is.
01:29:26
Speaker
something military could be. It would be interesting because even from an aeronautical perspective, it would be interesting to see what kind of an airplane or drone or whatever it is might be flying around there at those altitudes. And maybe it's something else. I don't know. It will be interesting to see.
Air Safety Concerns and Reporting
01:29:46
Speaker
Absolutely and like you said it's just amazing that you know you got in touch with air traffic control immediately onto military air traffic control who took it seriously and confirmed that there was nothing military or civilian in the airspace so like you said it could be military and they could just be testing something top secret and they can't tell you that something there but is I mean that's that causes an air safety question then doesn't it
01:30:10
Speaker
Exactly and well that's also good to keep in mind that I think it would be so nice if more pilots start coming out with these kind of sightings because there's clearly an air safety aspect to it as well. Hopefully I've been able to demonstrate that I'm not out here to document the
01:30:29
Speaker
the unexpected or to make an interesting story out of something mundane. I take pictures from the moon and the clouds all the time and I think with these kind of sightings it shows that it's important to keep a lookout for other things that are there and that we even
01:30:48
Speaker
myself as a professional, as a 747 captain, trusted with the safety of my airplane, I cannot explain. And I think it's very important to keep that aspect in mind. In general, I think pilots, most of the pilots are trained observers. We know what we see. We have spent a lot of time and money on our training and our selection of our people to do their job in the air. And as I said before,
01:31:16
Speaker
The moment I see something, the first thing that comes to mind is, is this going to be affecting the safety of my airplane? Is it a weather phenomena? Is it something military? Is it other traffic? Is it maybe even a weather balloon? Whatever it is, I want to know what it is. So yeah, I think that's the first step to identifying the problem. And actually today on Twitter, I don't know who it was, but someone suggested to contact
Contacting NARCA and Reporting Database
01:31:43
Speaker
Narca, that was it. And honestly, I never heard about an organization before. I looked it up just after dinner tonight and a very valuable suggestion. I'm going to contact them as well. I'm probably going to contact them and see if they can analyze the photo over Spain as well. Because even though it's a very underwhelming photo with the rest of the context around it,
01:32:08
Speaker
I think it makes for an interesting analysis. I would also hope that an organization like NARCA would be more known to other pilots as well.
01:32:22
Speaker
As I said, a lot of my colleagues have come forward privately with some really interesting, really, really interesting experiences. And it would be nice if we would be able, even anonymously, but even be able to have a place where we can just report these things and make up a database maybe. Even though 99% of them are completely explainable and mundane, maybe that 1% will make a difference. Absolutely, yeah.
01:32:52
Speaker
And by all means I'll, you know, obviously we'll stay in touch and I have possibly a few avenues we can possibly get extra analysis done on the photograph because obviously the more eyes on it, looking at it, the better for an outcome really. So we'll discuss that. So yeah, I mean, that was absolutely fascinating looking at all of those cases, you know, even the obvious prosaic ones, because it does just show what's
Audience Feedback and Open Discussions
01:33:18
Speaker
out there. But it also shows your discernment and the
01:33:21
Speaker
the detail that you require of yourself and the way you look at things. I think it's really important. And I hope, well, I can see it from a lot of the comments I've been reading that people have been really interested in everything that you've shown here today. So I can't thank you enough for coming forward. It really does mean a lot.
01:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's wonderful to hear. And yeah, hopefully I've been able to balance out the story because it's easy to jump to conclusions and say, ah, this pilot just took a blurry picture and he's saying it's something special. No, I know what I'm seeing. And I think I can identify 99% of the interesting stuff we see. But it's good to have an open discussion about it and to
01:34:07
Speaker
let's see where the chips may fall and you know even if it's just a new anomalous weather phenomena we would discover maybe bow lightning or vertical lightning and clear skies even though it doesn't make sense to me right now but neither do UAPs I mean there's something going on that I cannot explain and if we can get some explanation for it the better so yeah absolutely absolutely
01:34:36
Speaker
Well, I guess we'll have to leave it there. Good hour and a half.
Conclusion and Invitation for Sharing Experiences
01:34:40
Speaker
Thank you everyone for the wonderful questions, the donations, and just taking the time out of your day to be here. As always, I really appreciate it.
01:34:49
Speaker
So, yeah, for anybody that may be new here, go and follow all of Christian stuff. That is in the description below, but also check out mine. My links are all in the description below. I really appreciate anybody. And please, by all means, DM me if you're a pilot, if you know a pilot or anyone in the military or anybody that has anything they want me to look at, I will always do my best to check it out. But for now, guys, yeah, I think I'll do it. We'll see you soon. Take care. Goodbye.
01:35:19
Speaker
Thank you, thank you.