Source: El Diaro de Aysen (Chile)
Date: May 4, 2009
Chile: A Vidcap from the April 12 Footage
Aviation experts inspected images.
"This is very strange and there's really no explanation for it." These were the first words spoken by renowned pilots from the Aysen Region after watching one minute of video showing a strange and unknown formation of lights.
The lights were filmed by a group of young professionals whose sighting occurred from a hill located on the side of Route 7, some 20 minutes from Coyhaique.
They were on their way back to the regional capital on a Jeep when around 19:30 hours on April 12, one of them became aware of the presence of three lights over a hill, noting that they vanished a few seconds later. Pulling over to get a better view, and being unable to, they decided to continue with their drive.
Having covered approximately two kilometers, with their eyes glued to the same location, they suddenly saw the luminous spheres emerge, changing sizes as though merging, while not betraying any horizontal movement.
"The time was now around seven thirty p.m. and it was dark. There were four people in the vehicle and one of them alerted the others to the lights over on our left, toward the mountain area. We all looked. [The phenomenon] involved three very powerful white lights, and the middle one was larger," said journalist Jose Miguel de Pujadas, who made the recording.
Moreover, Sergio Pérez, a music instructor and the vehicle's driver, stated that one of the lights was somewhat higher than the other two. "I asked two people who know the area if there were houses or roads in that area, as it could be a car, and they told me that there are neither dwellings nor highways in the zone."
He added that they continued their drive to Coyhaique. Two kilometers later, they came to a curve from which they saw the phenomenon again. The young men said that the video was recorded with a digital camera and that no
sounds were heard. All they could hear was the noise made by passing vehicles on the road.
"When we saw this, we were astounded, because none of us had ever seen anything like this," the instructor pointed out. "Generally, when things like this occur, witnesses tend to claim seeing what they would like to believe, without
keeping an objective, neutral stance that is sufficiently skeptical to allow some room for rational analysis. For this reason I'm in no position to make sweeping statements. I can only tell you what I and 3 others saw, and I'm making this video available so everyone can draw his or her own conclusions."
The subject is nonetheless strange for renowned commercial pilot Carlos Martinez from Coyhaique, with 8000 flight hours over the region to his name. "It's not that one's being skeptical, or that I'm saying everything we see is
true, but that [the lights] does not correspond to the lights of an airplane."
Martinez, with 42 years as a commercial pilot, said that he believed at first that it could be a commercial airliner taking off from Balmaceda. However, he swiftly dismissed the possibility. "Two white lights and a reddish one are
not found on an airplane. Landing lights are white," he said, adding that navigation lights on the wingtips were
green and red. "Nor is the altitude proper for the area, as it would be flying under 7000 feet. That is to say, we would've heard about a crash immediately. The Cordillera is right there to the west and it's below the safety level,
but I don't think it's an airliner at all." The pilot added that the lights are too large and not stroboscopic.
After seeing the images, Alejandro Galilea, a pilot with 400 flight hours, also dismissed the possibility that the lights belonged to an airplane due to their colors and shape, and much less to those of a wheeled vehicle.
"Airplanes have a red tail light and a characteristic flash, as well as strobes that alternately turn on and off," he explained. Carlos Hein, another of the region's noted pilots, with 18,000 flight hours to his name and forty years
of experience, stated: "It's something strange and hard to explain at this time. I saw some very large spheres years ago over Cochrane that were very impressive, but the fact is that I have no explanation for this. It is
inexplicable. It is not compatible with an airliner or helicopter, because the movements are different. They're not fixed and they move from one side to another. They're above ground level. Truly this has no explanation."
Martinez, who in spite of his thousands of hours of flight time claims having never seen anything strange in the air, nonetheless remarked that some 15 or 18 years ago, he saw a phenomenon moving at high speed toward the
Las Bandurrias sector, witnessed by a large part of the population of Coyhaique, one summer day between 5 and 6 p.m.
There is also the experience of Pedro Finlez, who said that some 2 years ago, while flying with pilot Alejandro Galilea, but in separate vehicles, two identical lights flew by horizontally as they descended from the Andean Range. Much later, and before the current Balmaceda airport was built, he said that he had another experience: "I saw a light fly over my car and vanish into the woods. It lit up my car's interior. I don't know what kind of a light it was, but it vanished into the brush. It was so powerful that I almost drove off the road."
(Translation (c) 2009,S. Corrales, IHU. Special thanks to Ana Luisa Cid)