The Oregon 'White Aircraft' Incident: Airliners, Seattle Center and an F-15 Scramble

Wednesday, October 25, 2017. About 4:30 in the afternoon, Pacific time. The sun was low. Airliners were cruising at high altitude over the California and Oregon border.

Then Oakland Center spotted something near Red Bluff. A primary radar target. No transponder. No radio contact. "You know that target south of the boundary there, that 0027 code moving very fast at 37,000?" a controller asked.

An FAA recording describes the track. "Our radar did pick up an intruder target coming in at a high speed right toward the southwest... Southbound. And then it did an abrupt maneuver and just took off northbound." Then it dropped off the scope.

The crews could still see it. Pilots on United 612, Alaska Airlines 439 and 525, SkyWest 3478 and Southwest 4712 reported a white aircraft at about 35,000 to 40,000 feet, 5 to 15 miles off their wings. It was too far away to make out a type or markings. It never appeared on their collision avoidance systems. One controller relayed that it had been off United 612's 3 o'clock, "about 5 to 10 miles for about a hundred miles."

The Southwest 4712 pilot had nearly 30 years of flying jets and had never seen anything like it. "This was a white airplane and it was big. And it was moving at a clip too, because we were keeping pace with it, it was probably moving faster than we were."

For about 30 minutes it ran north past Mt. Shasta and Crater Lake. A pilot posting on Reddit as "Duprass" heard Seattle Center "attempting to track an airplane with no transponder who wasn't talking." It was last seen "over the Willamette valley northbound." The last airliner to see it had to descend into Portland and lost sight of it.

F-15C Eagles of the 142nd Fighter Wing, Oregon Air National Guard, launched from Portland as "Rock" flight, roughly 25 to 30 minutes after the first reports. Oddly, they first headed south. They made no radar or visual contact. A Reddit user writing as "The Flying Beard," who said they were a controller, explained why so few saw it: "All the guys on the east side couldn't see it due to the setting sun."

Tyler Rogoway of The War Zone broke the story on November 16, 2017. NORAD confirmed that "an incident involving multiple airline crews, air traffic control, and F-15Cs from the 142nd Fighter Wing based out of Portland did occur," and that the aircraft could not be found. The FAA confirmed it too, without adding detail. In February 2018 the FAA released tapes to Rogoway under FOIA. Officials sounded baffled. "Wow that's weird," said one. "This is a weird enough thing that there's not a set procedure," said another. Rogoway noted minutes of dead air on the tapes and could not tell whether they came from a recording glitch or from editing.

Most of the debate that followed looked for an earthly answer. On PPRuNe and in the press, the favourite was a classified US aircraft or a radar signature test. Fox raised the B-21 bomber. Others floated a drug smuggler with its transponder off, a foreign surveillance plane or a Boeing experimental drone. The War Zone, Fortune and PPRuNe all rated the smuggler idea unlikely. Fox called an extraterrestrial origin improbable.

No official body has explained it. No hoax has been alleged. No photograph exists. What remains is the audio, NORAD's confirmation and one controller's prediction: "I have a feeling someone is going to go through this with a fine-tooth comb."