Chile.Caleta Lobos · the lights below Orion's Belt seen by three airline crews

The report reached SEFAA from Diego Aracena airport in Iquique. On the night of 22 April 2024, the captain of Aerolíneas Argentinas flight ARG1364 reported that he had in sight flashing lights with no defined path. He was flying at 38,000 feet along airway UL550, heading west-northwest according to the summary, near the compulsory reporting point XONOG (20° 59′ 14″ S, 70° 13′ 05″ W), over the coast south of Caleta Lobos, in the Tarapacá Region. Asked from the ground, the crew of Sky Airline's SKU333, which had just taken off from Iquique heading south and was at 18,000 feet, said they saw two moving lights to the southwest of their position. In addition, a third flight, heading north along airway UQ802, also reported having the two lights on its left. Finally, ARG1364 specified that there were three to four lights, visible intermittently, flying on different paths, with fast movements, at an altitude it could not determine but very high, and that they seemed to be 'below the constellation of the Three Marys (Orion's Belt)'.

The report is inconsistent about that third flight: the summary calls it LXP302, LATAM's call sign, but the investigation and conclusion call it SKU302, of Sky Airline, and the radar figure labels its track 'SKU302 457 / 360'; the LXP302 in the summary looks like a typo. The same figure shows SKU333 at flight level 150, climbing to 370. Nor does the report label the time of its analysis, 21:05:31. From the position of the Sun it gives, it must be local time: Chile had returned to winter time, UTC−4, on 6 April, and at 21:05 UTC it was still daylight (a deduction of this record, as is the inference that the report date, 23 April, would already be the event's date in UTC).

From the radio exchanges, the office established that the crews spoke of two to four lights of different intensity, which gave the impression of flying in different directions, far above their flight levels and to the west of their positions, in the sector of the Three Marys. It placed the three aircraft with the radar record at the moments they mentioned the lights and reconstructed the astronomical horizon ahead of each. For all three the sector was very low, near the horizon. For SKU333, heading south, it lay behind and far to the right, that is, towards the northwest, although its crew had spoken of lights to the southwest; according to the report, this explains why they struggled to locate it; for the northbound flight it lay to the left and was easy to see; and for the Argentine aircraft, which in the figure is on heading 320°, it was practically straight ahead. The Sun, although below the horizon, was at roughly the same azimuth: for ARG1364, at 269.4° and 38.6° below the horizon.

Without an audiovisual record that would identify which objects produced the lights, the office focused on those immediately below the three stars as seen from the ARG1364 cockpit. At 21:05:31 it counted 28 satellites in that sector, at altitudes from 446 to more than 36,000 kilometres. Although the observers were in darkness, 24 were lit by the Sun and could reflect its light, among them several Starlinks, two OneWebs, a Globalstar, an Orbcomm and the Chinese Yaogan-36 01C, as well as several between 8,000 and 36,000 kilometres up, which in this record's view were too far away to be seen with the naked eye; the other four, all Starlinks, were in penumbra. It found similar situations for the other two aircraft. Its conclusion, dated 14 May 2024, states that 'it was concluded that the situation reported' by the three crews 'was reflections caused by space objects, which were above 400 km in altitude, and therefore did not pose a dangerous situation', and classifies the case as 'Probably explained', the same category given in the header.

Like the Paposo case five months earlier (↗), this one brings together three crews in three aircraft who spoke by radio of the same lights in the air corridor of northern Chile, and as then there were no images. The difference lies in how it was closed: here SEFAA considered it probably explained, relying on a geometric coincidence the report documents for each aircraft, that of lights seen roughly where the Sun was below the horizon. That is the condition in which satellites at high altitude remain lit while the observer is in darkness, and it is the same mechanism the office found in November 2023 for the crew of the Air Force's FACh922, who did film what they saw, and in that case it was able to name three Starlink satellites and the remains of Fengyun 1C (↗).

What the report does not resolve is just as clear. Without video, it identifies no satellite: it shows 28 candidates in the sector, 24 of them lit, without saying which could have produced the lights. Nor does it discuss the most striking feature of the account, lights with 'fast movements' travelling on different paths and 'with no defined path'. Several satellites crossing at once in different orbits can give that impression, but each follows a straight, uniform line across the sky, and the list includes several between 8,000 and 36,000 kilometres up, which in this record's view were too far away to be seen with the naked eye; the report does not show that any of the objects did anything like what was described. The crews were not wholly independent: SKU333 answered a query from the ground after ARG1364's report, and the third flight spoke afterwards; both spoke of two lights, not three or four, and only ARG1364 placed them below the Three Marys, according to the summary. SKU333 saw them to the southwest, whereas the report's reconstruction puts the sector behind and to its right, northwest of an aircraft heading south. The conclusion uses both 'it was concluded' and 'Probably explained', and the summary and the investigation do not agree on the airline of the third flight, nor entirely on the heading of the Argentine aircraft, west-northwest in one place and 320° in the figure.