Balloon launch may have lit up Phoenix sky

[CommunityEditor]

PHOENIX — Phoenix residents and local media were buzzing Tuesday about whether the city had experienced a close encounter of the first kind.

Red colored lights that formed a square and then a triangle were seen floating over north Phoenix late Monday, a sight reminiscent of an unexplained 1997 sighting that has become part of the area’s lore.

There was no immediate word where they came from.

The Air Force said the lights weren’t from any of their flight operations and officials at Deer Valley airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport could not explain it.

The lights were visible for about 13 minutes around 8 p.m. Monday.

A Luke Air Force Base official said the base wasn’t flying any aircraft in the sky Monday night and that the lights are not part of any Air Force activities.

Officials with the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma and Arizona National Guard also said their agencies had not been conducting any air operations.

A spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which monitors information on missiles or other manmade objects re-entering the atmosphere, said the agency received no reports of activity in the region.

KSAZ-TV, a local Fox affiliate in Phoenix, reported that officials from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport saw the lights approximately 4 miles south of the airport and that the lights were rising as they watched.

Airport officials said the lights were not from any aircraft at that airport.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said that air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor also witnessed the lights, but do not know the cause.

“There was nothing unusual on our radar scopes. There were no unidentified aircraft on our radar scopes. This is a non-issue for us,” Gregor said. “There’s nothing to investigate.”

On March 13, 1997, thousands of residents reported seeing a mile-wide, V-shaped formation of lights over the Phoenix area. In that case, the lights appeared about 7:30 p.m. and lasted until 10:30 p.m.

They were widely explained as flares dumped by a military training flight, though many still doubted the government was telling all it knew.

Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha said he investigated two sightings over Phoenix that March night and traced both to A-10 aircraft flying in formation at high altitude.


Article: http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2008/04/ap_phoenixlights_042208/

[CommunityEditor]

There could be a more down-to-earth explanation behind the strange lights that appeared over Phoenix on Monday night, according to one Phoenix man.

Lino Mailo, 44, said he saw his neighbor launch several helium balloons with flares attached to them from the back porch of his north Phoenix home. Mailo said the balloons took off about 8 p.m., right before the mysterious lights were spotted.

“It's pretty tricky, because the higher the balloons get, the harder it is to tell what they are,” Mailo said.

A helicopter pilot with the Phoenix police department who was flying last night also saw the objects and said they appeared to simply be some flares hanging from helium balloons. Mailo said he has no idea why his neighbor released the balloons, but he regrets not filming the act.

“I feel bad for the people freaking out about this,” Mailo said. “I could've put this whole thing to rest.”

Civilian and military aviation organizations said Tuesday they had idea what caused the lights.

An official with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which monitors the skies for security threats, said Tuesday the organization did not know where the lights came from.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said that although air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor Airport witnessed the lights, they do not know the cause. Nothing appeared on radar and Gregor said the FAA will not be investigating.

“There's nothing to look into,” Gregor said.

Several Valley residents reported seeing the lights in the sky Monday night and Gregor said the FAA received numerous calls. Witnesses said they saw four lights in a square shape that eventually became a triangular shape. The lights were moving to the east and they disappeared one by one.

Phoenix resident Kent Titze and his wife watched the lights from their house.

“It was something I've never seen before,” Titze said. “Right away I thought ‘UFO.’”

Titze's wife Fran rushed to take pictures of the lights.

“To me, it looked like clusters of red lights — like three or five of them in each bundle,” Kent Titze said.


Article: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/04/gns_phoenixlights_042308/