Flight Crew Reports Sighting of Unknown White Lights Over Yellowknife

The control tower at Yellowknife Airport in a file photo. (The Canadian Press/Chuck Stoody)

Pilots aboard a Canadian North airline flight bound for Yellowknife spotted “two white lights” dancing in a circular pattern some 10 nautical miles northwest of the Yellowknife airport but couldn’t identify them. Meanwhile, an air traffic controller couldn’t see the objects on radar.

The ATR 42-500 charter that departed from Fort McMurray, Alberta, sighted the lights when approaching its destination in the Northwest Territories capital city late at night on Jan. 29 at 11:15 p.m. local time.

A report on Transport Canada’s aviation incident database, the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Reporting System (CADORS), says the pilots could still see the lights “as they continued their approach all the way to the ground.” The report shows the sighting at 6:15 a.m. the next day, based on Zulu time used in aviation, which is seven hours ahead of Mountain Standard Time used in Yellowknife.

In an audio recording, a crew member is heard asking, “Do you got two planes that are just to the east of your field doing circuits or manoeuvres?”

The air traffic controller replies: “Negative. I have no reported traffic in the area. Do you have a visual on something?”

The crew member replies, “We are not seeing them on TCAS [traffic alert and collision avoidance system], but we can see the lights moving around.”

The air traffic controller continues to respond in the negative.

“I don’t have anything on the radar either. Let me talk to centre,” he said. The “centre” likely referred to what’s known as an area control centre that is responsible for controlling aircraft flying in a certain airspace.

The incident was first reported by Yellowknife-based Cabin Radio. The audio recording of the conversation was obtained from LiveATC.net, a website that provides live air traffic control broadcasts from air traffic control towers and radar facilities around the world.

The air traffic controller came back to the radio momentarily, saying that the centre also didn’t capture “anything about any movement in the area. So I’m really wondering what you’re seeing there.”

The pilots noted that the dancing lights “are not a risk” to the flight.

“We just want to know what it was, if you guys have a pin on the radar,” the crew said.

“No, we got nothing. That’s quite strange,” the controller responded.

The controller said he would file a CIRVIS report, short for “Communication Instructions for Reporting Vital Intelligence Sightings.”

CIRVIS reports should be made “immediately upon a vital intelligence sighting of any airborne and ground objects or activities that appear to be hostile, suspicious, unidentified or engaged in possible illegal smuggling activity,” according to a rules and procedures document published by Nav Canada, a not-for-profit corporation that owns and operates Canada’s privatized civil air navigation system.

The document says events that require CIRVIS reports include “unidentified flying objects.” Other examples are submarines or surface warships identified as being non-Canadian or non-American, violent explosions, and “unexplained or other unusual activity, including the presence of unidentified or suspicious ground parties in Polar regions.”

“We’re not crazy,” the Canadian North crew member said near the end of the audio recording.

“No, we believe you,” the controller replied.

U.S. President Joe Biden is establishing an inter-agency team to investigate unidentified aerial phenomena—a term that is replacing the more commonly known term UFO, “unidentified flying object.” The order came after the downing of three unknown objects in North American airspace this past month.

Transport Canada’s CADORS reports cover a wide array of incidents, ranging from bird strikes to disruptive passengers. The federal transport agency cautions that these reports for the most part “contain preliminary, unconfirmed data which can be subject to change.”