British Airways Flight 5061 Near Miss over the Pennines

Friday, 6 January 1995. British Airways flight BA5061 was on its way from Milan to Manchester. It was a Boeing 737 with about 60 people on board. Conditions were good for visual flying. Visibility was 10 kilometres or more, with a strong north-westerly wind.

It was 18:48. After dark. The jet was descending through 4,000 feet on its approach over the Pennines, about 8 nautical miles southeast of Manchester Airport.

Captain Roger Wills said it in a single breath: "we just had something go down the RHS just above us very fast." RHS meant the right-hand side. First Officer Mark Stuart saw "a dark object pass down the right hand side of the ac at high speed". It was so close that he involuntarily ducked. He was certain it was "a solid object", not a bird, balloon or kite.

The whole pass took about two seconds. The first officer described the object as wedge-shaped, with a possible black stripe down the side. The crew put its size somewhere between a light aircraft and a BAe Jetstream. They heard no sound and felt no wake or turbulence. The Times later wrote that it "flashed silently down the side of the jet".

The two pilots did not agree about the lights. The captain saw a number of small white lights "like a Christmas tree" and believed the object was lit up itself. The first officer thought it was a dark wedge caught in the 737's own landing lights. Behind them the passengers were "unaware of the drama".

Both pilots were worried enough to file a formal Airmiss report. British Airways passed their account, with the crew's drawings, to the Civil Aviation Authority's Joint Airmiss Working Group. The inquiry took about a year. Air traffic control radar had shown no unknown returns. The group ruled out hang gliders, paragliders and microlights at night, as well as military aircraft and commercial remote-controlled craft.

It rated both the risk and the cause as "Unassessable". Its conclusion was plain. "The incident therefore remains unresolved." The group praised the crew for reporting and hoped other pilots would come forward "without fear of ridicule". The Times called it "the fourth such incident since 1987". The Ministry of Defence filed a copy of the report. Answering a Parliamentary Question, officials said they "were not aware of anything which would indicate a matter of defence significance associated with the sighting".

The pilots themselves ruled out balloons, model aircraft and stealth aircraft. The captain had seen stealth aircraft before. Experts called a microlight flight in that darkness, wind and hill country "almost suicidal". In 2022 Manchester's Finest suggested a classified American triangular aircraft, since the Pennines are often used for military flying. No document supports that idea.

The accounts also differ. The CAA wording has the object moving "in the opposite direction", a head-on pass. The Times said the jet was "overtaken". Some press versions even put the encounter at 13,000 feet.

The same day, a Manchester student named Mark Lloyd reported a triangular object "rounded off at the rear" and made a sketch of it. He put its size at "20 times the size of a football field", far larger than anything the crew described. Nobody has shown that the two sightings are connected.

In 2010 the Ministry of Defence released its UFO files to The National Archives at Kew. The CAA report on BA5061 was among them, and the story went round the world again. Two trained pilots, two seconds and a dark shape at 4,000 feet. It remains unresolved.