UFO flying low over Las Vegas strip

April 23, 11:11 PMUFO ExaminerRoger Marsh

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Graphic depction of what the witness saw. MUFON image.

A licensed pilot and his wife took a cue from the crowd and looked upward as they waited for a Las Vegas show to begin April 21 - and observed what appeared to be a triangular-shaped UFO or an object in a V-formation, according to witness testimony from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database.

EDITOR'S NOTE: See witness update at end of story.

The object was almost directly overhead at about 10 p.m., the witness said, and "a triangular formation of lights, an open V-shape, perhaps three times wider than it was tall. The leading point of the V was directed several degrees west of due north."

He attempted to video tape the sighting, but was unable to capture the object during the 8 to 10-minute sighting.

The following is the original and unedited report as filed with MUFON. Please keep in mind that many UFO reports can be explained as something natural or manmade. If Nevada MUFON State Director Mark Easter follows up and provides a report on this case, I will report back on this page.

You can read about other triangle-shaped craft sightings here - and many V-shaped sightings here. For a look at selected cases from the past, please browse here. Some of our older cases this year have not beed linked in yet.

The witness in this case wrote to me on April 24 with the following observations.

I thought about the possibility that it could have been either a series of lighted balloons or flares (as I have seen some UFO researchers and debunkers try to portray), but being a pilot myself, I find it unlikely that McCarran Airport would direct their departure and arriving aircraft traffic to take-off and land downwind. The object was definitely moving in a northerly direction -- which was the same for all of the McCarran air traffic...which means it was moving against the wind. So free-floating objects it's ruled out in my mind.

The second thought I had about possible explanations would be a night-time aerial parachute stunt. The problems I have with that are #1 - I've been to allot of airshows and seen allot of parachute formation stunts, they don't last for 10 or 15 minutes, they are over in about 45 to 90 seconds. #2 - An aircraft should have been visible in the near vicinity of any freefalling parachutists, and I saw none. And #3 - You would have to be a seriously hardcore adrenaline junkie to parachute over McCarran airspace from altitude. There's too much air traffic. Low altitude I could see happening because the parachutes will be in the air like I said, a minute or so - no more - so a window of safety could exist. But that goes completely against the time frame that I observed.

The final thought I have had about the object was concerning the possibility of it being just a normal aircraft that appeared to be acting un-aircraft-like. What I mean by that is this...it was smaller in perspective than the Boeing 737's and Airbus 319's that were flying overhead every 10 to 15 minutes. The commercial traffic that was flying overhead were low enough to be lit from underneath by the lights of the strip and you could identify the airline visually by color of the aircraft -- Southwest airlines vs. U.S. airlines for example. The object appeared to be at a considerably higher altitude. I live in the middle of north-central Texas. I routinely watch commercial aircraft fly over our area at cruise altitude and speed...say above 25,000ft and cruising at 300-400kts. At that speed and altitude, it takes several minutes for an airliner to travel through the normal field of vision of an observer with a clear view of the sky. But I have two problems with that reference... #1 - I've never seen an airliner fly overhead as slow as this object appeared to travel. And #2 - If the object were flying at 25,000ft then it easily had over 3-times the wingspan of a typical commercial airliner....that's in the 400 - 500ft range!

The largest aircraft I have personally seen fly is a Military C-5 Galaxy. Wingspan of about 225ft. They are huge, and slow, and when you see one from a distance it looks like it is just pinned up in the air and sitting there. I've never seen a C-5 fly at night, so I am not familiar with it's lighting, but based on my own personal judgment, the object could possibly have been a C-5 cruising somewhere in the 10,000ft to 15,000ft altitude, or it was something freaking big that I've never seen before cruising at 20,000ft!

To sum it up as simply as possible...I would say that I saw an object larger than a Boeing 737, flying at an altitude higher than traffic height for an international airport and was operating at a speed slower than the stall speed of a Cessna 172...all without standard navigation lighting or aviation beacons or strobes.

Now if somebody can name that plane, I'll accept it as a plausible explanation. But until then...I'll proudly claim that I have seen my first real UFO.