The Bariloche Case: Aerolíneas Argentinas Flight AR 674

Bariloche sits on the shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi in Río Negro. Its airport lies about 13 km east of the city. On the night of 31 July 1995, Aerolíneas Argentinas flight AR 674, a Boeing 727 from Buenos Aires, was coming in to land. Captain Jorge Polanco had the controls. Behind the airliner came a Gendarmería Nacional aircraft on a medical flight, flown by Commander Juan Domingo Gaitán and Commander Rubén Cipuzak.

It was about 20:15. Polanco saw a light at his 11 o'clock, 12 nautical miles from the airport. By one account it rose out of Lake Nahuel Huapi. Then it came at them. The 1995 press quoted "a white light coming directly at us at full speed, before stopping suddenly at a hundred meters."

The object turned to follow the airliner down. It flew parallel, on the right side. Polanco later described a giant soup plate turned upside down, about 30 metres across. Green lights spun at great speed. On top, an orange light "seemed to be breathing." In later interviews he said it came no more than 15 metres from the wingtip. "There were three of us in the cockpit," he said. "The first officer and the engineer froze."

Then came final approach. The runway lights and the airport went out at once. Polanco broke off the landing and climbed back to 10,000 feet. The object moved behind the aircraft, stopped in mid air, climbed vertically, then repositioned itself in front of the plane. From the Gendarmería aircraft, Gaitán saw an amber light that grew brighter and dimmer. At last it disappeared at high speed towards Cerro Otto. The power came back. The 727 landed.

Polanco puts the encounter at 17 minutes. He said he felt as if all his energy had been drained. His whole body hurt. On the ground, others were watching. Daniel García, head of the airport, was in the control tower. The meteorologist Nicolás Aray was a witness too. Across the city, the brothers Abel and Pedro Drelevich described a large white light moving fast, then climbing vertically. The tower reportedly had no radar return except the Gendarmería aircraft.

In 1995 the Argentine Air Force declined to investigate, since no official body dealt with UFOs. In 2018 its commission, CEFAE, concluded there was no unidentified craft posing a real risk. On 9 September 2020, after a request from CEFORA, the Defence Ministry released the file, radio exchanges included. Several outlets called it Argentina's first declassified UFO document. In May 2026 the case surfaced again, quoted from the 1999 COMETA report, in UAP files released by the United States Department of War.

At the time, the Air Force blamed a searchlight at the Rocket nightclub. The 2018 report named Juan Carlos Rivero, who was testing a powerful searchlight aimed at the cloud base. Two aircraft were approaching a city left dark by a general power cut. Polanco calls that explanation absurd. "There's no way a 1995 searchlight could dazzle anyone," he said. "They made me feel like a fool dreaming about flying saucers." Supporters note that the Drelevich brothers watched from the opposite side of the city.

The story has been retold on Jaime Maussan's television programme, and the Argentine press marks its anniversaries. In September 2022, three Aerolíneas Argentinas crews over Choele Choel saw two lights rising and falling. One pilot asked: "Did we just see Polanco's UFO?"