Pilot told ‘good luck with the aliens’ after reporting UFO to ATC,
The pilot of a private jet was left stunned after spotting a small, silver cylinder hovering near his wing thousands of feet above Rhode Island.
A newly released video of the live air traffic control (ATC) broadcast captures the tense moment, with the pilot telling the ground team, ‘It appears to be standing still,’ as the mysterious object floated beside him.
The object hovered near the wing tip, briefly pacing the aircraft, before drifting out of view.
ATC confirmed there were no other reports in the area and asked whether the object could have been a drone or a balloon.
Flying a Piper PA-32RT-300T Turbo Lance II, which seats up to five passengers, the pilot said he could see no attachments on the object and described it as ‘astonishing’ while maintaining an altitude of roughly 3,500 feet.
Other pilots in the region chimed in over the radio, with one remarking, ‘I want to believe him,’ while ATC joked, ‘Good luck with the aliens.’
No official FAA or NTSB report has been made public, a common occurrence for unexplained aerial phenomena unless they pose a direct hazard.
The video was uploaded to the YouTube channel VASAviation, run by a corporate pilot and certified flight instructor from Spain, which regularly posts ATC frequency conversations.
The clip, which has been viewed more than 14,000 times, was posted about a month ago, indicating that the sighting likely occurred around that time.
Recently, the broadcast made its way to social media, appearing on X this week, where it has quickly gone viral.
While the pilot did not believe the object was a balloon, some experts offered alternative explanations.
Mick West, a British-American science writer and conspiracy theory investigator, suggested that a weather balloon was the most plausible scenario.
Other social media users speculated that it could have been a military test of new technology.
‘UFOs are a brilliant cover,’ one X user commented, while another questioned, ‘Do you think they’d really test it on a commercial flight?’
Michael Harrison added, ‘Truthfully? Yeah, I do. It also has the benefit of keeping the UFO narrative fresh.’
Aviation enthusiast Anthony Dohrmann, founder and CEO of AI-powered virtual caregiver company Electronic Caregiver, offered a more grounded perspective.
He suggested that the object could have been a weather balloon, which are often launched at night and carry cylindrical payloads.
‘[They] have a kind of translucent material that can reflect city lights or catch sunlight higher up, making it hard to judge their true altitude,’ Dohrmann explained.
He added that such balloons can appear to hover or rise slowly, sometimes at about 1,000 feet per minute, and noted that many are launched in nearby Massachusetts.
Dohrmann also pointed out that amateur hobbyists frequently experiment with balloons and other small devices at lower altitudes.
‘They’re supposed to go in a certain direction, but things don’t always work like they’re supposed to,’ he said.
The broadcast incident comes just months after a veteran US fighter pilot broke his silence about a near-collision with a UFO that defied the laws of physics and left the Air Force in stunned disbelief.
Major Ryan Bodenheimer, a retired F-15 and F-16 combat pilot, revealed in a YouTube video that one of the ‘wildest experiences’ of his career involved a close encounter with a rectangle-shaped UFO as he flew with his squadron over southern Wyoming.
Bodenheimer, who served in the Air Force for 13 years, said the large craft suddenly appeared out of nowhere during a training mission and looked to be on a collision course with his plane.
‘Then I realized we weren’t going to hit, and all of a sudden it came more into view, and it was a rectangular shape. This was like essentially a perfect rectangle,’ Bodenheimer revealed in his video on June 8.
The military veteran described the UFO as being 30 to 50 feet in height and appearing to be glowing around the edges of its bright white body as it flew alongside the Thunderbirds, the Air Force’s elite aerobatic demonstration squadron.
Bodenheimer added that this craft had no visible vapor trail coming from an engine, no radar signal, and was traveling at approximately 400 knots (460 miles per hour).
‘It really was defying any type of aeronautical laws that I’ve learned,’ Bodenheimer said.
Bodenheimer then revealed that his report to air traffic control left officials in ‘dead silence’ before the entire matter was apparently dismissed as an ‘anomalous object.’
The strange rectangle UFO got so close to Bodenheimer’s F-16 Falcon at 30,000 feet in the air that he said he could make out every detail of the craft before it eventually flew off and was never seen again.
When air traffic controllers in Denver asked Bodenheimer if he could give them any more details about the UFO, he revealed that it had a cream-colored interior that became transparent or had a hole in its center.
‘I know it sounds like I’m talking about a delicious pastry, but this was the wildest experience I’ve ever had,’ the fighter pilot joked.
The only evidence of Bodenheimer’s sighting was a report made by air traffic control saying that an object had been spotted in the area where the Thunderbirds were training that day, but he never heard from anyone about the incident again.
