Cases and themes
Reports from airline, military and private pilots, air traffic controllers and aviation agencies. 136 events, newest first.
Select any year above to see what happened that year.
Open Pilots and aviation as a timeline
Media6 Jan 2026
Americans for Safe Aerospace, in a post by Ryan Graves, announced a white paper arguing that the regulatory framework for pilots keeps about 90 percent of pilot UAP sightings unreported, and that career risk is the main reason pilots stay silent.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Government26 Oct 2025
An FAA notice replaced the air traffic manual's 'UFO Reports' section, which had told controllers to refer callers to a private center such as the National UFO Reporting Center. Controllers must now tell supervisors of UAP reports, and ATC must notify the FAA's security operations team.
Photo: United States Federal Aviation Administration, Public domain
Government6 Jun 2025
President Trump signed Executive Order 14305, creating a federal task force on unauthorized drones and directing FAA flight limits over sensitive sites, wider drone detection and counter-drone capacity. It addresses drones and unidentified drone incursions; it does not mention UAP.
Photo: Daniel Torok, Public domain
GovernmentJun 2025
The Office of the Chief Science Advisor of Canada published its Sky Canada Project report on how public UAP reports are handled. It recommended naming a lead federal agency, creating a service to collect and publish analyses, and encouraging pilots to report without stigma.
Photo: Phillip Jeffrey, CC BY-SA 2.0
Sightings6 Mar 2025
SpaceX lost its Starship upper stage minutes into its eighth test flight. Glowing debris was filmed from Florida, the Bahamas, Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos, and the FAA briefly halted departures at several Florida airports, citing space launch debris.
Photo: NASA/JSC/Don Pettit, Public domain
Government28 Jan 2025
At the first press briefing of President Trump's second term, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the drones seen over New Jersey were authorized by the FAA for research and other reasons, with many flown by hobbyists. She gave no details on who operated them.
Photo: The White House, Public domain
Whistleblowers18 Jan 2025
In a NewsNation special built on a Ross Coulthart interview, former Air Force helicopter pilot Jake Barber said he flew as a contractor recovering downed craft, including an egg-shaped object he believes was non-human. A Pentagon spokesperson said no verifiable information supports such claims.
Photo: Mosman Library, CC BY 2.0
Government18 Dec 2024
At the request of federal security partners, the FAA issued 22 temporary flight restrictions barring drones within a nautical mile of critical infrastructure in New Jersey towns, ground to 400 feet, into mid-January. Similar limits covered parts of New York. DHS called it a precaution.
Photo: Chetsford, Public domain
Government16 Dec 2024
DHS, the FBI, FAA and Pentagon said the FBI had received more than 5,000 drone tips, about 100 of which produced leads. They said sightings were lawful drones, manned aircraft, helicopters and stars, that nothing anomalous had been found, and asked Congress for counter-drone powers.
Photo: Chetsford, Public domain
Sightings13 Dec 2024
Runways at Stewart International Airport in New York were shut for about an hour after the FAA reported drone activity during the Northeast drone flap. Gov. Kathy Hochul said 'This has gone too far' and sought federal help; the Port Authority said flights were not affected.
Photo: Acroterion, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government11 Dec 2024
Senators Andy Kim, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand wrote to DHS, the FBI and the FAA asking for an immediate briefing on how they were working with police to identify the source of night drone sightings over New Jersey and New York.
Photo: Chetsford, Public domain
Government3 Dec 2024
The FAA confirmed it had issued two temporary flight restrictions at the request of federal security partners after drone reports in New Jersey: one over President-elect Trump's Bedminster golf club, the other over the Army's Picatinny Arsenal, until Dec. 26.
Photo: United States Army Picatinny Arsenal Precision Armaments Laboratory, Public domain
SightingsNov 2024
From mid-November 2024 residents across New Jersey and nearby states reported thousands of suspected drones at night. In joint statements the FBI, DHS, FAA and DoD said they found no national security threat and attributed sightings to lawful drones, manned aircraft and stars.
Photo: Chetsford, Public domain
Government11 Jan 2024
Reps. Robert Garcia and Glenn Grothman introduced H.R. 6967, which would let pilots, controllers and other aviation workers report UAP to the FAA, have the FAA pass reports to AARO, and protect reporters from retaliation or medical disqualification. It did not advance past committee.
Photo: House Creative Services, Public domain
Military12 Feb 2023
On Feb. 12, 2023, the FAA closed airspace over part of Lake Michigan for about two hours 'in support of' Defense Department activities, and NORAD said it imposed the restriction for air-traffic safety. It came a day after a Montana closure and hours before an object was downed over Lake Huron.
Military2023
At the July 2023 House Oversight UAP hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz said a member of an Eglin AFB flight crew showed him a photo of an orb a pilot saw near four craft in a diamond formation over the Gulf of Mexico. He asked that the image and radar data be given to the committee.
Photo: Ike Hayman, U.S. House Office of Photography/House Creative Services, Public domain
Whistleblowers2023
Former Navy F/A-18F pilot Ryan Graves founded Americans for Safe Aerospace, a nonprofit that says it supports pilots who report UAP and pushes for better reporting. Graves says pilots began sending reports to the group because they lacked another channel.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Sightings9 Jul 2022
Locals in southern New South Wales heard a sonic boom and saw a blazing arc as part of a SpaceX Crew-1 Dragon trunk reentered. Farmers later found charred panels near Dalgety, and the Australian Space Agency confirmed the debris came from a SpaceX mission.
Photo: Steve Bennett, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government19 Oct 2021
In a University of Virginia Center for Politics talk with Larry Sabato, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he had spoken with Navy pilots whose radars locked onto unknown objects. He said no one knew what they were and hoped they were not an adversary's technology.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Government25 Jun 2021
Responding to the ODNI preliminary UAP assessment, Senate Intelligence chair Mark Warner called the report rather inconclusive and said the U.S. must understand and mitigate threats to its pilots, whether from adversary technology, drones or balloons.
Photo: Ryan Donnell, Public domain
Media3 Jun 2021
Three weeks before the ODNI preliminary assessment, senior officials told the New York Times the report found no evidence that objects seen by military pilots were alien craft, nor that they were secret U.S. technology, while most incidents stayed unexplained.
Photo: DNI, Public domain
MilitaryJun 2021
The South China Morning Post reported that Chinese military researchers, including Chen Li of the Air Force Early Warning Academy, proposed using AI to analyze a growing volume of unidentified aerial object reports from radar, pilots and observatories.
Media16 May 2021
CBS's 60 Minutes aired Bill Whitaker's report in which former Navy pilot Ryan Graves said his squadron saw unidentified objects over restricted airspace off Virginia for years, and Navy aviators David Fravor and Alex Dietrich described the 2004 Nimitz encounter, weeks before the ODNI report.
Photo: U.S. House Committee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
Sightings21 Feb 2021
A pilot on American Airlines Flight 2292 from Cincinnati to Phoenix radioed that a long cylindrical object had passed rapidly over the plane. The airline confirmed the call, the FBI said it was looking into it, and the FAA said controllers saw nothing on radar.
Photo: Colin Brown from St Ann, MO, USA, CC BY 2.0
Government16 Dec 2020
On the Conversations with Tyler podcast, former CIA director John Brennan called the Navy pilot videos eyebrow-raising and said some phenomena might reflect something not yet understood, possibly another form of life. He framed it as keeping an open mind, not as a conclusion.
Photo: CIA photo, Public domain
