Monday, January 01, 2007

Flying saucer in Chicago?

You know I don’t blame them for changing their minds. I hate flying into O’Hare too. Connecting there is such a pain, espically if you need to change terminals. The food court deep dish pizza is delish though.

Flying saucer fails to land at O'Hare
Associated Press

CHICAGO — Federal officials say it was probably just some weird weather phenomenon, but a group of United Airlines employees swear they saw a mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare Airport last fall.

The workers, some of them pilots, said the object didn't have lights and hovered over an airport terminal before shooting up through the clouds, according to a report in Monday's Chicago Tribune.

The Federal Aviation Administration acknowledged that a United supervisor had called the control tower at O'Hare, asking if anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object. But the controllers didn't see anything, and a preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.

“Our theory on this is that it was a weather phenomenon,” Ms. Cory said. “That night was a perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low (cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you can see funny things.”

The FAA is not investigating, Ms. Cory said.

United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy said company officials don't recall discussing any such incident from Nov. 7.

At least one O'Hare controller, union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all.

“To fly 7 million light years to O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home because your gate was occupied is simply unacceptable,” he said.

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2 comments:

Darren McEwen said...

The first time I landed there for a connection I had an hour to kill so I thought I'd snoop around the airport shops.

I knew I had to make it to another terminal but the plane didn't board for about an hour and a half... had lots of time, right?

I thought, just to be safe, I'd get to that gate and then look around.

I ended up jogging to the damn gate to make it to the boarding call.

Jeff said...

That long moving walkway underneath the tarmac is crazy. Still, if you can make the time, food court deep dish pizza. Really good. Much better than Air Canada's buy on board menu.