A voice on the company radio
It was a gray, hazy Tuesday afternoon at O’Hare, the ceiling a solid overcast at 1,900 feet, the temperature in the low fifties, sunset less than half an hour off. At Gate C17 on Concourse C, United Flight 446, a Boeing 737 bound for Charlotte, was running seventeen minutes late. A ramp employee on the pushback crew looked up—almost straight up—and saw something round hanging just under the cloud. He called it in on the company frequency. Within minutes mechanics, supervisors, and pilots across the United operation were stepping outside and craning their necks at the same patch of sky. The first officer of Flight 446, a thirty-nine-year-old with more than 13,000 hours, opened his side window; so did the captain. They watched it for about five minutes. It was, the first officer later said, the color of dirty aluminum.
Sources: Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportO’Hare report by an airline management employeeIn the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?
Dark gray, silent, and hard to size
Everyone agreed on the shape and almost nothing else. It was a disc or a saucer, dark gray or metallic, without lights, without sound. The Chicago Tribune printed size estimates from six feet across to twenty-four; nobody knew its distance, so nobody could know its size. One ramp witness said it was spinning “pretty fast.” The taxi mechanics who saw it from the cockpit of an empty 777, looking at it obliquely from another part of the field, thought it was standing still with a haze beneath it. Their first guess was a balloon. One of them, who would later go on television as “Joe” with his face hidden, told the Tribune: “I don’t understand why aliens would hover over a busy airport.”
Sources: In the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportO’Hare report by an airline taxi mechanic
“Did you see a flying disc out by C17?”
The case’s spine is a set of telephone calls, preserved because they went through the FAA’s recorded lines. At 4:30 p.m. a United zone controller named Sue rang the O’Hare tower and asked the area supervisor, Dave, “Hey, did you see a flying disc out by C17?” He laughed. “You’re seeing flying discs?” “Well, that’s what a pilot in the ramp area at C17 told us,” she said. “They saw some flying disc above them. But we can’t see above us.” Dave wanted to know whether United was celebrating Christmas early. “I haven’t seen anything Sue, and if I did I wouldn’t admit to it,” he said. “Unless you’ve got a new aircraft you’re bringing out that I don’t know about.” He promised to keep an eye out. Seventeen minutes later Sue called again and got a different controller. Dave, she reported, “thought I was pretty much high. But, um, I’m not high and I’m not drinking.” And now there was news: “Someone got a picture of it.” “A disc, like a Frisbee?” “Like a UFO type thing.” At 4:52 a man from United called to say that “some of our pilots on the ground are reporting a UFO sighting at a thousand feet to the east side of the airport.” Dave had heard: “Either that or you guys have unveiled a brand new aircraft and ain’t been telling anyone about it.”
Sources: Certified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsReport of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport
The clock refuses to behave
The recordings also contain a puzzle. On the ground-control frequency, at 3:58 p.m. by the tape’s certified clock—half an hour before Sue’s first call—a controller clears a Gateway flight to taxi and adds, “use caution for the, ah, UFO.” A minute later he tells a colleague, “Somebody reported a UFO or a flying disc above Charley concourse, seriously.” At 4:47 the same controller asks the Gateway pilot to look out his window at the United concourse, and gets back, “Not that I can tell. I thought my job was stressful.” A minute after that a United maintenance crew—the mechanics in the 777—key their mic: “Oh, we saw it a half hour ago. A whole bunch of us over at Charley concourse. We thought it was a balloon but we’re not sure.” Flight 446 pushed back at about 4:27 and was handed off to departure at 4:37. The tower’s written log records Sue’s call at 4:45 and closes the matter at 5:03. Whether the 3:58 stamp is wrong, or the disc was over the concourse for the better part of an hour, the documents cannot say.
Sources: Certified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsFAA Daily Record of Facility Operation: O’Hare tower, November 7, 2006Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport
The hole in Chicago’s ceiling
The detail that made O’Hare unforgettable was the exit. Several witnesses said the disc shot straight up into the overcast, and where it went through, the cloud opened. “It was like somebody punched a hole in the sky,” one employee told the Tribune. Others saw blue sky through a clean-edged circle. The taxi mechanic, who had parked the 777 and looked up again, found the object gone and an almost perfect round gap in its place, which faded over several minutes; NARCAP’s reconstruction has the hole lasting as long as fourteen minutes. Not every account agrees. The management employee who reported it to the National UFO Reporting Center remembered the thing zipping off to the east. A witness watching from a parking lot a mile away wrote that what he saw was “very obviously NOT clouds! … a solid object!” Somewhere in the crowd, by his account, a man with a digital camera was taking picture after picture. On the tapes, Sue said someone had one. None has ever surfaced.
Sources: O’Hare report by an airline taxi mechanicO’Hare report by an airline management employeeIn the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport
United knew nothing—until the record spoke
When Jon Hilkevitch, the Tribune’s transportation reporter, began asking questions, United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy told him, “There’s nothing in the duty manager log… I checked around. There’s no record of anything.” The FAA said the same. Then the paper filed a Freedom of Information Act request, and the agency, in Hilkevitch’s words, quickly reversed itself: the calls were on tape and the disc was in the tower log. NARCAP, an aviation-safety group that had filed its own request eleven days after the sighting, received the recordings and the Daily Record of Facility Operation that spring. FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory explained that no controller had seen anything, that a check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, and that the agency would not be investigating. “Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon,” she said. “When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things.” NARCAP noted that at the time of the sighting the ramp lights had not yet been switched on.
Sources: In the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?UFO Is Reported at O’Hare; Feds Are SilentFAA Daily Record of Facility Operation: O’Hare tower, November 7, 2006Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport
A million readers find Gate C17
Hilkevitch’s story ran on New Year’s Day, 2007. Within four days it had passed a million page views and was the most-read and most-emailed item on the Tribune’s site every day it was up; one of the paper’s editors told the Columbia Journalism Review that it “blows anything else out of the water.” NPR had Hilkevitch on the air that first evening, where he explained that he had talked to six witnesses, that the size estimates came from UFO groups rather than the workers, and that the departure had left “this big donut hole vacuum” in the overcast. A local air-traffic controllers’ union official, Craig Burzych, supplied the line the wire services loved: “To fly 7 million light years to O’Hare and then have to turn around…” The witnesses stayed anonymous. One told the Tribune he had stood in the gate area “not knowing what to think.” A colleague said one of them had “experienced some religious issues” over what he had seen.
Sources: In the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?UFO Is Reported at O’Hare; Feds Are SilentChi Trib Readers Seem to Believe
The safety report that got dropped
Officially, the disc was barely looked into. United, by NARCAP’s account, opened an internal safety review the next day and dropped it before the end of the week; the airline declined to identify the Flight 446 crew, and the captain declined to be interviewed. NARCAP’s volunteer scientists, led by former NASA researcher Richard Haines, did the rest: interviews with eight airline witnesses, the weather record, the FAA’s primary radar data for the half-hour in question—“There were no primary returns found near gate C17”—and the Romeoville weather radar, which showed a faint echo over the airport that could as easily have been rain. Their conclusion was that “a small physical, and apparently solid object hovered” over the gate for at least ten minutes “but was not detected either by radar or visually” by anyone in the tower. Haines even wrote to Scott Air Force Base to ask whether anything had been scrambled. He got no reply.
Sources: Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportIn the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?
The pictures that never arrived
Photographs did arrive, but not from the witnesses. Within weeks a dramatic image of a dark disc over the concourse was circulating online. NARCAP showed it to one of the primary witnesses, who pointed out that the aircraft in it were MD-80s that United no longer flew and that the disc was “much too big, is in the wrong place, and is hazy”; it turned out to be a reversed stock photograph of the airport with a saucer pasted in. A second, watermarked from a UFO forum, was “too big and not enough contrast.” The group logged at least a dozen fraudulent claims. A researcher had exposed the most famous fake by 2007; a Showtime documentary was still using it in 2021.
Sources: Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportIs the O’Hare Airport UFO Case Still Great?
Weather phenomenon—or two phenomena folded together?
The conventional explanation has a name: the fallstreak, or hole-punch, cloud. When an aircraft climbs or descends through a layer of supercooled droplets, its wings and propellers can trigger freezing; the ice crystals grow, fall out, and leave a spreading circular hole with a wisp beneath it, which to an untrained eye looks startlingly deliberate. At O’Hare, with jets passing through the overcast every minute, that is the obvious candidate for the hole. NARCAP argued the cloud was too warm: the nearest balloon sounding put the freezing level at 10,000 feet, well above the 1,900-foot deck. But that sounding was launched at Davenport, Iowa, 140 miles away. Astronomer Mark Hammergren of the Adler Planetarium told the Tribune in 2013 that the temperature had been “right near the freezing point.” Skeptic Robert Sheaffer adds that a solid object punching through cloud leaves a swirl of turbulence, not a “crisp, cookie-cutter-like” circle, and suggests the hole may have been in the higher layer at 8,000 to 9,000 feet. Brian Dunning’s objection is different: among a crowd of airline employees in 2006, when most Americans carried a camera phone, nobody took a picture, and not one witness has ever given a name. The hole, in other words, has a good explanation. The disc under it does not—and no one has explained why a fallstreak would be preceded by a disc.
Sources: Fallstreak holes: what they are and how they formThe hole story: aircraft and hole-punch cloudsReport of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportChicago’s UFO: the O’Hare sighting, revisitedIs the O’Hare Airport UFO Case Still Great?The Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO
What remains above Gate C17
It is the most ordinary setting in the archive: a delayed flight, a wet ramp, men in reflective vests, a controller cracking jokes about Christmas. That is what has kept it alive. Airline professionals reported something hanging over an occupied gate at one of the busiest airports on earth, the report reached the federal tower in real time, and the federal answer was a shrug about lights that were not yet on. Nobody in the tower looked up and saw it. Nobody on the ground has ever said their name. Where is the man with the digital camera? What did the crew of Flight 446 say to each other on the climb-out to Charlotte? And why, if it was only weather, did the weather wait until a crowd had gathered to open a hole in the sky?
Sources: Certified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsIn the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?The Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO
The official documentary core
Two FAA records survive through the FOIA releases: the certified voice recordings and the tower’s Daily Record of Facility Operation. They establish that United personnel reported a “flying disc” near Gate C17 to federal controllers on the afternoon of November 7, that the report reached the ground-control frequency, and that the tower logged it at 4:45 p.m. and closed the item at 5:03. They also establish that no controller saw anything. The FAA’s quality-assurance technician certified that no other recordings mentioned the incident.
Sources: Certified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsFAA Daily Record of Facility Operation: O’Hare tower, November 7, 2006Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International Airport
First-person reports with protected identities
Two witnesses filed reports with the National UFO Reporting Center within two weeks, before any newspaper knew; NARCAP interviewed eight airline employees and the Tribune six. Their accounts agree on a dark, silent, round object over Concourse C and on immediate radio chatter; they disagree on how long it stayed, whether it rotated, and whether it left straight up or to the east. Every witness feared for their job and none has been named. That is the case’s central weakness, and no amount of consistency among anonymous accounts can fully repair it.
Sources: O’Hare report by an airline management employeeO’Hare report by an airline taxi mechanicReport of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportThe Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO
What the instruments did not preserve
There is no authenticated photograph or video, no primary radar return, no measured cloud temperature at the airport, and no released United file. Even the time is uncertain by half an hour. The reported altitude of a thousand feet and the size estimates all depend on seeing an object of unknown size against a cloud of known height.
Sources: Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportCertified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsIn the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?
A serious alternative with an incomplete match
Fallstreak holes are a documented product of aircraft passing through supercooled cloud, and O’Hare is the ideal place to make one. Whether the cloud that afternoon was cold enough is genuinely disputed, with NARCAP’s distant sounding on one side and a planetarium astronomer on the other. The hypothesis addresses the hole well and the disc not at all.
Sources: Fallstreak holes: what they are and how they formThe hole story: aircraft and hole-punch cloudsReport of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportChicago’s UFO: the O’Hare sighting, revisitedIs the O’Hare Airport UFO Case Still Great?
Classification
This file is classified as an unresolved multi-witness airport encounter with a documented report to air-traffic control. The records prove that trained aviation workers reported a disc and that the FAA chose not to look. They do not show what the workers saw.
Sources: FAA Daily Record of Facility Operation: O’Hare tower, November 7, 2006Report of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportThe Chicago O’Hare Airport UFO
- 7 NOV 2006 · 3:58 PM CST
By the certified clock, an O’Hare ground controller warns a taxiing flight to “use caution for the UFO” and tells a colleague a flying disc has been reported over Concourse C.
- ABOUT 4:15–4:30 PM
A pushback crew member at Gate C17 sees a round object under the overcast; pilots of Flight 446 open their windows; mechanics, supervisors, and other employees gather to look.
- 4:30 PM
United’s Sue calls the tower: “Hey, did you see a flying disc out by C17?” Supervisor Dave has seen nothing and jokes about Christmas.
- ABOUT 4:34 PM
Witnesses report the disc shooting up through the cloud and leaving a circular hole that lingers for minutes. Flight 446 departs at about the same time.
- 4:47–4:52 PM
Sue calls again to say someone has a picture; a United official reports pilots seeing a UFO at a thousand feet; the taxi mechanics radio that they saw it half an hour earlier.
- 5:03 PM
The FAA’s quality-assurance office closes the item on the disc; the tower log had timed United’s inquiry at 4:45.
- 13–21 NOV 2006
An airline manager and a taxi mechanic file reports with NUFORC; NARCAP requests FAA records under FOIA on November 18.
- 1 JAN 2007
The Chicago Tribune publishes Jon Hilkevitch’s story after its own FOIA request turns up the tower recordings; it draws more than a million readers in four days.
- MAR–JUL 2007
NARCAP publishes and revises its technical report; the FAA declines to investigate, and a widely shared photograph is exposed as a fake.
- 2013–2024
Skeptical reviews argue for a hole-punch cloud and stress the missing photographs and anonymous witnesses; no witness has come forward by name.
Sources & interviews
Certified O’Hare tower and ground-control voice recordingsFederal Aviation Administration · FOIA records and transcripts reproduced in NARCAP Technical Report 10, pp. 31–39FAA Daily Record of Facility Operation: O’Hare tower, November 7, 2006Federal Aviation Administration · Certified record reproduced in NARCAP Technical Report 10, pp. 24–25O’Hare report by an airline management employeeNational UFO Reporting Center · Submitted November 13, 2006 · Posted December 7, 2006O’Hare report by an airline taxi mechanicNational UFO Reporting Center · Submitted November 21, 2006 · Posted December 7, 2006In the sky! A bird? A plane? A … UFO?Chicago Tribune · Jon Hilkevitch · January 1, 2007UFO Is Reported at O’Hare; Feds Are SilentNPR · All Things Considered · Interview with Jon Hilkevitch · January 1, 2007Chi Trib Readers Seem to BelieveColumbia Journalism Review · Edward B. Colby · January 5, 2007 · On the story’s readershipReport of an Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and its Safety Implications at O’Hare International AirportRichard F. Haines et al. · NARCAP Technical Report 10 · Revised July 24, 2007Fallstreak holes: what they are and how they formNOAA National Weather Service · La Crosse, WisconsinThe hole story: aircraft and hole-punch cloudsUCAR/NCAR · June 10, 2010 · Cloud-physics research overviewChicago’s UFO: the O’Hare sighting, revisitedChicago Tribune RedEye · Ryan Smith · March 20, 2013Is the O’Hare Airport UFO Case Still Great?Robert Sheaffer · Bad UFOs · October 4, 2021 · Skeptical review of the cloud hole and the photographsThe Chicago O’Hare Airport UFOBrian Dunning · Skeptoid #926 · March 5, 2024 · Skeptical review2006 O’Hare International Airport UFO sightingWikipedia · Orientation and reference trail · Consulted September 17, 2026Spotted an error, or know a better source? Write to hello@uap.fun.
Connected files
The Lights Beside Flight 1628The other airline case where the FAA’s tapes are the best evidence and the agency declared itself out of the UFO business.The Lights over StephenvilleFourteen months later, another set of ordinary witnesses and another official denial that had to be walked back.The Lakenheath Radar NightAir-traffic people, a tower, and a clock that would not line up—fifty years earlier.Leslie KeanThe journalist who took up the O’Hare witnesses’ cause in 2007 and was still arguing the case on The Colbert Report in 2010.Discuss this case
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