An American Airlines The pilot saw what he described as a “long, cylindrical object” expanding over the airline flying to Phoenix in New Mexico’s Sunday sky. The FBI said it was aware of the incident and the Pentagon said the military was not conducting tests in the area that day.
“Do you have goals up here?” one of the pilots of American Flight 2292 asked air traffic controllers, according to a broadcast recording obtained by CBS News. “We just had something on top of us that, I hate to say, looked like a long, cylindrical object that almost looked like a kind of cruise missile thing that was moving very fast and going over us.”
American confirmed that the transmission was from Flight 2292 going from Cincinnati Airport to Phoenix. The airline referred additional questions to the FBI, which said it was aware of the incident.
“While our policy is neither to confirm nor deny investigations, the FBI is continually working with our federal, state, local and tribal partners to share information and protect the public,” said spokesman Frank Fisher, of the The FBI’s foreign office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said in a statement. “Anyone with knowledge of suspicious or criminal activities should contact their local law enforcement agency or the FBI.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that the pilot reported the sighting over New Mexico shortly after noon on Sunday. The agency said air traffic controllers saw no objects in the area on their radarscopes.
A Pentagon spokesman told CBS News national security correspondent David Martin that the sighting occurred about 400 miles away from the Army’s White Sands missile zone in southern New Mexico. The spokesman said the Advanced Defense Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, the Missile Defense Agency and the U.S. Strategic Command did not conduct any testing from the missile range on Sunday.