Airliner Crew Reports UFO Sighting (FBIS translation of Trud)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

to the aircraft. It flew after it as if it were attached to it--at an altitude of 10,000 meters at a speed of 800 kilometers per hour.

"An honorary escort," Cherkashin muttered, "what an honor for us..."

Inside the cloud little lights "sparkled"-they blinked on and off like the string of lights on a New Year tree. Then fiery zigzags glided horizontally. The navigator conscientiously reported everything to the ground.

The controller's excited voice was heard to respond:

"I am observing the northern lights on the horizon. Where do you see your cloud?"

The navigator responded.

"It coincides," the controller said.

The cloud continued to change. A "tail" grew out of it, like a tornado--wide at the top and thin at the ground. A "comma" was formed. Then the tail began rising "to the horizon" and the cloud changed from an elliptical shape into a quadrangular one.

"Look," the copilot said, "it's imitating us."

Indeed, they were now being escorted by a sharp-nosed "cloud airplane" without wings, with a tapered tail. It was shining with yellow and green light. There was a sense of a dense nucleus where the real aircraft's nozzle was situated.

A flight attendant entered the cockpit.

"The passengers are interested in knowing what is flying alongside us."

Cherkashin sighed:

"Tell them it's a cloud of some kind. The yellow is city lights breaking through from below. The green... tell them it's the northern lights."

At this time one more real aircraft entered the Minsk controller's control area. A Tu-134 from Leningrad was flying in the direction opposite to that being flown by the crew from Tallin. About 100 kilometers separated the two airliners. It was impossible not to notice the huge cloud airplane from such a distance. However, the commander of the other "Tu" [Tupolev aircraft] responded to Cherkashin's question that he...observes nothing. The Minsk controller, who now saw the cloud airplane, gave the Leningrad crew the coordinates, the direction in which they should detect the unusual phenomenon. But it was as if they were blind. And at a distance of only about 15 kilometers before the encounter they recovered their sight. They described the cloud airplane exactly.

Much later, in attempting to explain to themselves what they had seen,