Porter Airlines Flight 204 near-collision with a doughnut-shaped object over Lake Ontario

Monday, 14 November 2016. Porter Airlines flight 204 left Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International for Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. The aircraft was a de Havilland Canada Dash 8-400, the Q400. On board were 54 passengers, a captain, a first officer and two flight attendants.

It was a short morning hop. The flight was over Lake Ontario, roughly 55 km east of Toronto, near Pickering. Reports of the altitude range from about 8,000 to 10,000 feet.

Just before 7:30 a.m., the pilots noticed an object in the distance. As they approached, they realised it was very close to their flight path. Directly ahead. According to the safety board's summary, it "appeared to be solid, approximately 5 to 8 feet in diameter and shaped like an upright doughnut or inner tube." No colour, no lights and no sound were ever reported. Just a ring, standing in the sky over the lake.

The captain overrode the autopilot in order to quickly descend under the object. It passed to the right of the aircraft and above it. A TSB investigator later said the aircraft "ducked under the object" and called the encounter "very close." Public flight tracking showed the plane making a sharp zig-zag before continuing on to Toronto. It landed on runway 26 at Billy Bishop at about 07:31.

The two standing flight attendants "were in the process of securing the cabin for arrival." The sudden manoeuvre threw them into the cabin structure. Both were taken to hospital with minor injuries and released. No passengers were hurt. There was no contact with the object.

That same morning the Transportation Safety Board of Canada sent investigators to Billy Bishop. Porter spokesperson Brad Cicero said: "The pilots' initial assessment was that it looked like a balloon. After debriefing, there is potential that the object was a drone." TSB spokesperson Julie Leroux said the threat "likely came from a drone." Transport Canada reminded the public of its drone rules, with fines up to $25,000 and possible jail. Yet the first entry in Transport Canada's CADORS database said the flight reported "flying by" an unidentified object, "not likely a balloon."

On 23 November the TSB closed the file. Spokesperson Karine Eyamie said: "The description and size of the object does not match any known commercial or consumer available unmanned aerial vehicle." The encounter had happened too far from shore and too high for a drone.

The incident, the board said, "will remain identified as a near collision with an unidentified airborne object." A summary went into the TSB database for statistical analysis. No full public report was published.

A balloon remained the obvious candidate. It had been the pilots' own first impression. DroneLife writer Miriam McNabb argued the object was most likely a balloon: "It seems, rather, highly unlikely that a recreational drone was launched in that area and flew to that altitude." She criticised the media frenzy for hurting the drone industry. Still, no specific balloon type, or any other specific object, was ever put forward to match a solid upright ring at that height.

In 2016 the story ran as a drone scare across the tech and aviation press. In 2021, Daniel Otis of VICE World News revisited it through CADORS records, alongside other Canadian pilot reports of objects nobody could name. SYFY Wire and blogTO followed. Today it remains unidentified. A ring in the path of an airliner.