Kansas "Sea of Flashing Lights" FAA UAP Report

September 27, 2022, in the small hours over southwest Kansas. A private Gulfstream IV, registration N127RR, was flying from Portland to Oklahoma City with its tracking turned off on FlightRadar24. At 07:54Z, about 2:54 am local time, it was southeast bound at 35,000 feet. Fifty nautical miles west-northwest of LBL, the airport code for Liberal, Kansas. The crew was talking to Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center, known as ZKC.

Then came the question. "I didn't know if you had any idea what all these white flashing lights are out here. There is a whole sea of them." The controller replied: "Sorry, say again?"

The lights were below the jet, first seen off its left side. The crew said it was "almost like the windmill farm thing, except they are more sporadic." The FAA later summed it up in plain words. "The unknown phenomenon was described as a sea of flashing white lights below their altitude. The lights were not very bright and observed for over 100NM."

They were not alone. JetBlue 136 saw the lights at its "1 to 3 o'clock" position, ahead and to the right. According to The Black Vault, numerous flights reported them. The radio discussion ran for more than 35 minutes. No evasive action was reported.

The FAA logged the event as an "Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon" and marked the entry "Initial/Closeout." In early October 2022, an anonymous person with access to the FAA database passed the report text to The Black Vault. John Greenewald published it on November 25, 2022. Under FAA FOIA case 2023-00488, the agency released only the air traffic control audio; Greenewald said other requested documents appeared to be missing and filed an appeal. The Black Vault did not investigate the case itself, but archived the report and recordings.

Within days, Mick West and others on Metabunk had a candidate. Using ADS-B flight tracks for both N127RR and JetBlue 136, West placed part of the sighting near Beaver, in the Oklahoma Panhandle. Satellite images of the area show circular irrigation fields and oil wells.

The clue came from a YouTube commenter, Keith Foster. "Every single center pivot irrigation system in southwest Kansas has strobe lights flashing on them while they are watering crops. These are position indicators for the farmers." A farmers' forum, NewAgTalk, said the same. "Most around here have the strobes on the pivot to let you know the machine is still walking." One farmer described the view on Highway 287 north of Amarillo: "The combination of what seems like thousands of those strobes and the ability to see 50 miles every direction you look adds up to quite the spectacle."

September 2022 was a drought period. Farmers were irrigating for winter wheat planting. And the pilot's own "windmill farm" comparison fits lights on the ground. The FAA has offered no further conclusion, and none has come from the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office. Nobody has suggested the report was a hoax.

The case lives on as a paper and audio trail. In May 2025, The Epoch Times revisited it, with the lights "flying beneath his plane." The FAA text says only "below their altitude."

It is easy to confuse with another Kansas City Center report days later. On October 2, 2022, a Delta crew near the Kansas and Oklahoma border reported a bright light fading in and out for about 15 minutes. Metabunk users linked that one to Starlink satellite flares. Two reports. Two separate stories.