UFO HUNTERS - Aliens at the Airport

History Channel - Original Air Date: 2/11/09

The premise of this show is that alien craft are buzzing airports and airplanes.  On November 7, 2006, a dark gray, disc-shaped object appears hovering over O'Hare airport.  The alleged object then shoots into the sky, blasting a hole into the dense cloud cover; but the airline and FAA insist nothing unusual happening.  Naturally the show cries cover-up, and the team branches out to investigate.  But because the object didn't show up on radar, the FAA refused to look into the incident.  There's plenty of recorded cockpit chatter, though apparently no pictures.  The show also mentions a triangle of lights (triangle-shaped object) that appeared over Chicago in 2004.  They talk to witnesses about the alleged event, and replay the tapes from the tower.  An air controller, though, believes that the sightings were a rare weather phenomenon.  He says that if a solid object had been sighted, they would have stopped or redirected flights.  The episode then shows a video of a light supposedly buzzing an airplane in Japan (though it looks like a plane flying past a star, or a distant plane to with its landing lights on,  or maybe a flare to me).  The supposed object was only seen through the viewfinder, and the show suggests it was invisible to the naked eye but not the camera.  They do a little experiment to show that some camreas can pick up some infrared signals.  Then they do analysis of the film, though -- as often happens -- I agree with neither their premises nor their conclusions.  Really, they can't even tell if the "object" is in front of the plane or behind it.  Yet, they draw conclusions that tend to support their basic UFO premises -- that these "craft" have cloaking devices and move faster than conventional aircraft and are secretly observing our airports.

As usual, the show is filled with hearsay and recreations ... and a lack of actual evidence.