TENERIFE, Canary Islands (UPI) - Passengers who insist
their Caravelle jet was buzzed by unidentified flying objects said Thursday
one of their group collapsed when he saw the pulsating red objects zig-zagging
across the night sky toward them.
The Caravelle was carrying charter
passengers from Saltzburg, Austria, to Tenerife in the Spanish Canary Islands
Sunday when it made an emergency landing at Valencia airport on the Spanish
mainland after being "pursued" by what its pilot says were UFOs.
The civil aviation department of the
Spanish Transport Ministry opened a secret investigation into the bizarre
encounter at the request of Transport Minister Salvador Sanchez Tehran, who
was in Valencia at the time of the sighting.
Passengers from flight 297, which
arrived in Tenerife a day late, said Thursday many - but not all - of them saw
the objects pilot Lerdo de Tejada says made two attempts to intercept him,
forcing him into a 14,000-foot dive.
The passengers, for the most part
Germans and Austrians, said they saw the UFOs in the sky over Valencia airport
for two hours after they landed.
The director of the airport
corroborated their claim.
Several people living in the Valencia
region came forward to confirm the UFO sighting.
HOMEPAGE