Aeroméxico Flight 129 UFO Strike over Mexico City

Some of Mexico's most persistent sky stories come from the people who manage its airspace. Enrique Kolbeck Vergara was an air traffic controller in Mexico City. He was later cited as having 48 years of experience. Raymundo Cervantes Ruano was a captain with Aeroméxico. Retellings credit him with more than 40 years of experience and 17,000 flying hours.

July 28, 1994, around 22:30. Aeroméxico Flight 129, a domestic DC-9 from Guadalajara, was descending toward Mexico City International Airport. Earlier that evening, the tower had received telephone calls. Several sources reported an unidentified object flying close to buildings near the airport. According to Kolbeck, it would have been in the flight path of Flight 129.

The jet was on final approach at about 5,000 ft. The landing gear had just been lowered. Suddenly the plane rocked as though in collision with something.

Cervantes thought they might have clipped a helicopter in this busy traffic corridor. He believed the gear was damaged, declared an emergency and landed safely at Mexico City with the gear intact. No one was hurt. Controllers confirmed that no other aircraft had been in the area, and the tower had detected nothing. Cervantes stood by his claim that his plane had collided with something.

The damage depends on who tells the story. One version describes a gash on the nose gear that looked like it had been made with some kind of cutter. Another speaks of a cleanly sliced hydraulic line to the landing gear. In 2001, Kolbeck said something crashed into the main landing gear, on the left side. Nobody reported seeing the object at the moment of impact.

On May 9, 2001, Kolbeck testified at the Disclosure Project press conference organised by Steven Greer at the National Press Club in Washington. The case later appeared in History's UFO Files. The episode, titled "Mexico's Roswell", centred on the 1974 Coyame case. In 2010, Cervantes and Kolbeck sat together on a Pilots Panel in Mexico City with Daniel Monraz. Jaime Maussan moderated.

On September 12, 2023, Kolbeck spoke at a hearing in Mexico's Chamber of Deputies. The hearing was organised by Deputy Sergio Gutiérrez Luna with Jaime Maussan. Kolbeck's account had changed. He now described calls over about 30 minutes, fear that the plane would come down on Avenida Insurgentes, and two objects. "These are not myths or legends, phenomena like this are compromising the safety of the airspace, with much superior and different technologies."

Not everyone accepts the story. Critics point to the missing identification of the co-pilot and to questionable controller testimony. Many consider it a fabrication and a hoax. The versions also contradict each other: nose gear or left main gear, a gash or a sliced line, one object or two. No 1994 news report, no airline record and no finding from Mexico's aviation authorities has been found. No radar data has been published. Even NICAP's 1994 chronology has no entry for it. The only explanation on record is the captain's own first instinct. A helicopter.

Flight 129 is one of several Mexican aviation encounters Kolbeck has spoken about. They include an escort to landing at Mazatlán in 1975 and a cluster of metallic objects over Morelia in 2002. A comparable aviation case is Manises in Spain, 1979, when an airliner diverted because of a UFO. Whatever struck Flight 129, if anything did, it has never been explained.