It can only be a good thing that several governments around the world have begun to lighten up and release information they have on unexplainable aerial phenomena that has been reported to them over the years. With the recent release of many documents from England's Ministry of Defense we have the reports of another, never identified, sighting to add to the growing list of truly "Unidentified Flying Objects".

In the evening of April 21,1991 an Alitalia airliner had a very near miss with an object that passed dangerously close to it. The flight was being made by A McDonnell-Douglas MD80 passenger jet which was carrying fifty-seven souls on board. It was coming from Milan and was at 22,000 feet headed for Heathrow Airport. Suddenly the pilot, Achille Zaghetti, saw a brown missile-shaped object pass at speed over his aircraft at what he guessed was within a thousand feet. The sighting shocked him so badly he yelled, "Look out!" to his co-pilot who also saw the mysterious thing as it passed their plane.

Shaken by the near collision he radioed the Area Control Center (ACC) to determine if they had the object on radar. He was informed that they did indeed see "an unknown target ten nautical miles behind you". The ACC report of the incident included the sighting by a young teenager who had reported seeing what he thought was a missile at first flying low to the ground before zooming into the sky.

While the initial radar pictures had the object labeled as "Cruise missile??" the possibility that a military weapon had been involved was quickly investigated and proven to not be so. The Ministry of Defense trolled the records and schedules of the Army's firing ranges near Lydd and found no evidence that any missile firing or "space-related activity" had been underway that evening. Fortunately the object did not collide with the passenger jet and all aboard returned safely to the ground.

The same type of unidentified wingless object was subsequently spotted buzzing several other passenger craft as that summer continued. On June the 17th four passengers of a Dan Air Boing 737 also witnessed a fast moving wingless "projectile" pass below their craft as it climbed for altitude on takeoff from Gatwick airport. A month later, July 15, the pilot of a Britannia Airways 737 also reported a fast moving "small black lozenge-shaped object" pass by as he was approaching Gatwick Airport. To date, no one is any wiser as to who or what was playing such a dangerous game with these civilian aircraft.