Last updated on July 1st, 2024 at 05:06 pm
On March 25, 2024, a story broke in the New York Post concerning an airline passenger named Michelle Reyes who accidentially filmed a black cylinder shaped object with a white possible dome over New York City passing her plane in the opposite direction`. Of course, she reported the incident to the FAA immediately. She was concerned it was a safety hazard. She received no reply as of this writing from the FAA. This is not surprising!
Tom Wertman, MUFON’s Ohio State Director and a member of The MUTUAL UFO Network’s Photo Analysis Team, who rarely is stumped, could not identify the cylindrical shaped vehicle. Bird is ruled out which often is the case with a quick blurred flybay in the foreground of a camera lens. Additionally, the plane was at a fairly high altitude for birds thus limiting severely what species of bird it could have been.
CNN and various news organizations had their regular go-tos such as Ben Hansen suggesting it was anomalous. In this case, MUFON would agree this is certainly not a bird but what appears to be a technological object. Balloon has been ruled out. The object’s speed cannot be determined as the plane was flying at several hundred miles per hour and the object was in only one or two frames going in the opposite direction.
However, MUFON took a different approach to the sighting. We looked for possible correlating cases and we found one very significant one that leans towards an anomalous object! We at MUFON excel in this method of correlations with other historical cases.
There is a second report of a similar black cylinder with a milky white dome that occurred in Italy in 1979. The full report is below but for the reader to have a comparison, we also have a drawing from the 1979 Cecconi Case and it clearly shows a parallel to the La Guardia photo from March 25th of 2024. The attached article below shows a photograph of the 1979 object photographed by pilot Cecconi! Ironically, 80 photos were taken by the pilot but only one is in the public domain. Why?
If you look at Michele Reyes’s photo and compare it to the artist’s conception of the 1979 Cecconi oObject, it is undeniable that we are looking at the same object or an object of similar construct 45 years later.
From website :https://www.xaluannews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3179667#google_vignette
On June 18, 1979, the then pilot marshal Giancarlo Cecconi (born in 1933, in Florence) was returning from a photographic survey carried out on the Ligurian Apennines.
He was flying over the area between Rovigo and the Colli di Abano Terme, when he received by radio from the control tower of the military airport of S. Angelo di Treviso, where he was stationed, the invitation to connect with the aerobase of Istria ( TV), whose radar had signaled an unidentified flying object, approximately on the vertical of Quinto di Treviso and therefore in the immediate vicinity of the aforementioned airport.
Mr. Cecconi, who belonged to the 14 ‘Group of the 2’ Fighter Bomber Reconnaissance Wing of the Italian Air Force, was on board a G 91 / R, equipped with four VINTEN cameras, located in this way: two on the sides of the front of the cockpit, one in the front position and the fourth in the ventral position. With these, in fact, he had carried out the photographic surveys he had been in charge of. He then arranged with the Ground Control Body staff to go and identify the object detected by the radar.
At the moment of the sighting, it occurred to him that it could be a solar UFO; then he realized it was something different. The day was beautiful and he soon realized that that “black spot” had very different characteristics.
It appeared to him in the shape of a dull black “fuel tank” and, on its slightly flattened upper part, he noticed a fairing with two “mustaches”; this was underlying something clear and white which, in his opinion, was a kind of milky white “dome”. The characteristics of the surface did not allow the refraction of light. The object appeared to have a length of about 6-8 m and a width of about 3 m.
At the time of the close encounter with the unusual “aircraft”, this was on the vertical of the Treviso military airport at a height of about 1300 m.
Having made contact with the UFO, he took a first series of photographs with the front camera and after having made, in a very short period of time, the “noose” (maneuver that consists in reversing the course), he noticed that the object was still in the same position, so that he could take another series of photographs using the side cameras this time.
He understood that it was something having a certain rigidity and deduced it from the fact that, when the plane approached him at a speed of about 300 knots (450-500 km / h), the object “… did not suffer from any turbulence…”. The pilot had had the opportunity to see UFO Solar on other occasions. However, they felt the turbulence caused by the nearby passage of the plane and their movement could last even a quarter of an hour; this object, on the other hand, appeared to remain static and did not vibrate even though Mr. Cecconi had passed it at a distance of about a hundred meters.
During the sighting, which lasted about five minutes, Mr. Cecconi was able to take more than eighty photographs that showed the object always in the same frontal position, or slightly angled; in fact, this was never completely visible from the side, it was as if the “thing” wanted to “aim” the plane.
According to the witness, he appeared to have taken a defensive attitude. It never fully exposed the side and he had never managed to photograph it entirely from the side; for this he was impressed.
While the pilot was completing a turn, the Istrana radar center told him: “we lost it! It’s no longer on the screen!”. It had suddenly vanished between hits on the radar.
Also from the control tower of the S. Angelo airport they reported that the object had inexplicably disappeared from sight within a few moments. He looked where the UFO was supposed to be, but he couldn’t see it anymore.
After the plane had returned to the Treviso base, the specialists, as usual, removed and took delivery of the film containers and took them to the laboratory of the Development and Printing Department.
As soon as the photos were developed, he checked them out and asked a friend (photo lab worker) for a copy.
Years passed and after Mr. Cecconi retired, ufologists asked the Ministry of Defense to release the documentation concerning this case, and they were told that: “the object in question, immediately identified, was photographed with edge and unequivocally identified by the personal photo interpreter in a cylindrical balloon, made with black plastic bags.”.
The answer left the ufologists baffled, especially in consideration of the experience and preparation of Mr. Cecconi who boasted a curriculum like few others and was one of the best known and esteemed pilot figures for seriousness and competence.
