전 시카고에 살고있습니다. 얼마전 회사 출장일로 공항에서 비행기를 기다리던중, 직장동료 아버지를 만났습니다. 그는 유나이티드 파일럿으로 베트남 참전 군인이며 은퇴가 얼마 안 남은 베테랑 파일럿이었습니다. 그와 대화중 제가 개인적으로 궁금했던 질문을 했습니다. u.f.o.를 본적이 있냐고…그의 대답은 ‘yes’ 였습니다. 그것도 바로 얼마전에..저는 그의 신념에 찬 눈에서 그가 진실을 말 한다는 것을 알았습니다. 회*책 때문에 자세한 것은 저에게 말 할순 없지만..그 당시 부기장에게 ‘ 네 눈에도 저거 보이는 거 맞지? you see what i am seeing?’ 라고 물었다고 합니다.

저도 비행기 시간때문에 많은 것을 물어볼순없었서 나중에 기사를 좀 찾아보았습니다. 이 사건의 특이사항으로는 미국서 가장 바쁜 공항에서 파일럿을 포함한 다수의 사람들  목격되었다는 점입니다.예전에 미당국이 돌림노래처럼 애기하던 기상관측기구나 군사기구로 핑계로 사실을 은폐할수 없었다는 점입니다.

아래는 시카고 트리뷴 기사를 간략히 해석한 것입니다. 그리고 펌 사진들의 진위여부는 불확실합니다.

 1년전, 2006년 10월 7일 시카고 세계에서 가장 바쁜 오헤어 공항에서 미확인 비행물체가 목격된다. 지루한 가십으로 들릴수도 있겠지만, 유나티드 에어라인 몇명의 직워들은 그것은 사실임을 맹세하며, 정부나 그들의 상사와 이웃들이 그 문제를 심각하게 받아들이지 않는 것에 대해 화가 난다고….
그들은 접시모양의 비행물체가 오헤어 국제공항에 낮게 몇분간 떠 있다가 아주 빠르게 구름을 뚫고 사라졌다고..그 상승기류가 너무 강해 구름에 뱀장어가 뚫고 나간것 같은 구멍을 남겼다고…

이것이 무엇이었을까. 외계비행체, 날씨 예측 풍선, 일급비밀 군사비행체, 아니면 그저 착시현상?

공식적으로 유나티드 에어라인은 적어도 12명 이상의 직원이 목격한 이사건에 대해 언론에 대해 모른다고 일관했지만, 연방항공국은 유나이티드로부터 미확인 비행물체에 대해 질문하는 전화를 받았다고 확인 했습니다. 하지만 레이더에는 아무것도 나타나지 않았다고….

최초목격자는17번 게이트에서 일하던 유나이티드 램프 관리자였습니다. 목격은 4시 30분 일몰전에 일어났습니다. 목격자들의 증언에 따르면 비행체는 어두운 회색에 아주 확실하게 보였고, 증언에 따라 다르지만 2-7m 직경에 어떠한 빛도 내지 않았다고. 그 중 몇명은 비행물체는 회전하는 프리스비 처럼 보였다고 합니다.  구름속으로 갑자기 사라지기 전까지 어떠한 소리도 내지않고 낮게 깔린 구름밑에 고정되어 떠있었다고 합니다.

목격자의 증언,

보잉 777조정실에서 비행 격납고로 운저하던 유나이티드 메케닉은 ‘나는 원래 과학적사고를 하는사람인데, 왜 금속성  비행물체가 바쁜 공항에 떠있었는지 이해가 안된다’ 고 말하면서, 확실한것은 그것은 지구의 물체가 아니었다고…

‘나는 그냥 그자리에 서서 아무것도 할수가 없었습니다, 그저 그것이 무엇인지 보고만 있었죠’

400m 상공에 떠있던 비행물체는갑자기엄청난 속도로 위로 솓구쳐 올라갔습니다.

목격자들은 그 움직임이 너무 빨라 시각적으로 보기조차 힘들었다고…

 ‘ 마치 누군가 구름에 펀치를 날려 구멍을 만든것 같았습니다’

파란하늘이 보이는뻥 뚫린 구멍이 몇 분간 유지되었습니다.

유나이티드는 공식적으로 어떠한 성명이나 발표도 거부했으며 이는 날씨에 의한 현상이었다고 발표합니다.

(이하는 시카고 트리뷴 원문기사 )

it sounds like a tired joke--but a group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously.
a flying saucerlike object hovered low over o'hare international airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some united airlines employees who observed the phenomenon.

was it an alien spaceship? a weather balloon lost in the airspace over the world's second-busiest airport? a top-secret military craft? or simply a reflection from lights that played a trick on the eyes?

officials at united professed no knowledge of the nov. 7 event--which was reported to the airline by as many as a dozen of its own workers--when the tribune started asking questions recently. but the federal *iation administration said its air traffic control tower at o'hare did receive a call from a united supervisor asking if controllers had spotted a mysterious elliptical-shaped craft sitting motionless over concourse c of the united terminal.

no controllers saw the object, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, faa spokeswoman elizabeth isham cory said.

the faa is not conducting a further investigation, cory said. the theory is the sighting was caused by a "weather phenomenon," she said.

the ufo report has sparked some chuckles among controllers in o'hare tower.

"to fly 7 million light years to o'hare and then h*e to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable," said o'hare controller and union official craig burzych.

some of the witnesses, interviewed by the tribune, said they are upset that neither the government nor the airline is probing the incident.

whatever the object was, it could h*e interfered with o'hare's radar and other equipment, and even created a collision risk, they said.

the unidentified aerial phenomena (the term that extraterrestrial-watchers nowadays prefer over unidentified flying object) was first seen by a united ramp worker who was directing back a united plane at gate c17, according to an account the worker provided to the national ufo reporting center.

the sighting occurred during daylight, about 4:30 p.m., just before *set.

all the witnesses said the object was dark gray and well defined in the overcast skies. they said the craft, estimated by different accounts to be 6 feet to 24 feet in diameter, did not display any lights.

some said it looked like a rotating frisbee, while others said it did not appear to be spinning. all agreed the object made no noise and it was at a fixed position in the sky, just below the 1,900-foot cloud deck, until shooting off into the clouds.

witnesses shaken by sighting

"i tend to be scientific by nature, and i don't understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport," said a united mechanic who was in the cockpit of a boeing 777 that he was taxiing to a maintenance hangar when he observed the metallic-looking object above gate c17.

"but i know that what i saw and what a lot of other people saw stood out very clearly, and it definitely was not an [earth] aircraft," the mechanic said.

one united employee appeared emotionally shaken by the sighting and "experienced some religious issues" over it, one co-worker said.

a united manager said he ran outside his office in concourse b after hearing the report about the sighting on an internal airline radio frequency.

"i stood outside in the gate area not knowing what to think, just trying to figure out what it was," he said. "i knew no one would make a false call like that. but if somebody was bouncing a weather balloon or something else over o'hare, we had to stop it because it was in very close proximity to our flight operations."

some joke, others research

the databases of various ufo-watching groups are full of accounts filed by pilots about sightings of unknown aircraft and anomalies that affected n*igational equipment onboard planes.

whether any of the ufo incidents are real or merely the result of individual perceptions, some experts say the events pose a potential safety risk to pilots and their passengers.

"there h*e been documented cases where safety appears to h*e been implicated, and more and more we are coming to the point of view that we are dealing with an intelligent phenomenon," said richard haines, science director at the national *iation reporting center on anomalous phenomena, a private agency.

"we must be proactive before an aircraft goes down," said haines, a former chief of the space human factors office at nasa's ames research center.

haines is investigating the o'hare incident. he said he has determined that no weather balloons were launched in the vicinity of o'hare on nov. 7.

"it's absurd that the military would be conducting aerial test flights" near the airport, haines said.

all the witnesses to the o'hare event, who included at least several pilots, said they are certain based on the disc's appearance and flight characteristics that it was not an airplane, helicopter, weather balloon or any other craft known to man.

united denies ufo report

they're not sure what was hanging out for several minutes in the restricted airspace, but they are upset that no one in power has taken the matter seriously.

a united spokeswoman said there is no record of the ufo report. she said united officials do not recall discussion of any such incident.

"there's nothing in the duty manager log, which is used to report unusual incidents," said united spokeswoman megan mccarthy. "i checked around. there's no record of anything."

the pilots of the united plane being directed back from gate c17 also were notified by united personnel of the sighting, and one of the pilots reportedly opened a windscreen in the cockpit to get a better view of the object estimated to be hovering 1,500 feet above the ground.