India.Imphal · a white object over the tower shuts the airport

On Sunday, November 19, 2023, at 14:30 India time, the control tower at Bir Tikendrajit International Airport in Imphal, capital of Manipur state, received a call from the control room of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), the federal force that guards the country's airports. It said an unidentified flying object could be seen near the airfield, right above the control tower. According to the official account, the object appeared white, moved south above the tower and stayed stationary there for some time. It remained visible until 16:05 and then disappeared. Sunset in Imphal that day was at 16:26, so the whole observation took place in daylight.

The operational consequences were immediate. The airport authority issued a NOTAM, the official notice to airmen, and suspended take-offs and landings for nearly three hours. IndiGo flight 6E-275 from Kolkata was told to hold over the airport and, after about twenty-five minutes, was diverted to Guwahati; 6E-5118 from Delhi ended up in Kolkata. Three departures (6E-525 to Agartala, AI-734 to Kolkata and AI-890 to Guwahati) were held on the ground until the restriction was lifted. The Indian press put the number of affected passengers at around five hundred.

The Air Force's Eastern Command, headquartered in Shillong, was informed and activated its air-defense mechanism. According to the Indian press, Rafale fighters of No. 101 Squadron took off from Hasimara air base in West Bengal and flew low over the area with their sensors. The first found nothing and returned; a second was sent, with the same result. After the airport reopened, Eastern Command summed it up in a post on X, without mentioning the fighters: its air-defense response mechanism had been activated on the basis of visual inputs from Imphal airport, and the object, which it described as small, was not seen again.

The record that fixes the facts is parliamentary. On December 14, 2023, MP Manish Tewari put a question in the Lok Sabha, the lower house. He asked for details of the object and the closure, and about the danger to aircraft, about recent reports that a UFO had buzzed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 before it disappeared on March 8, 2014, and about the Government's policy in the event of a sighting. The Minister of State for Civil Aviation, General (ret.) V. K. Singh, answered in writing in unstarred question no. 2024.

His answer confirms the time, the source of the alert, the color, the movement, the duration, the NOTAM and the list of affected flights, and adds a sentence that sums up the institutional logic: any unidentified airborne object in the vicinity of an airport is a danger to operations because of its unpredictable movements, and the Imphal object posed that same danger. It answered the questions on the danger and on MH370 in a single item, without mentioning that flight. It offered no identification of the object, nor did it announce one as pending.

No agency published an explanation afterwards. The press floated a private drone and a balloon, including a comparison with the Chinese balloon shot down over the United States that February; the video that circulated shows a bright dot against the sky that fits a balloon, without allowing a conclusion.

There is no published radar, no quality photograph and no crew describing structure: there is a white dot in plain sight for an hour and a half. What there is is an institutional chain: a federal security force that raises the alert, a tower that turns it into a NOTAM, an airline that diverts flights, an air force that launches fighters and a minister who, before Parliament, confirms every link in writing.

What the ministerial answer describes (a white object that moved southwards, stayed stationary for some time and remained visible until 16:05, an hour and a half) and what the press reported (that the fighters did not find it) is what one would expect from a high-altitude balloon, which looks small, seems still and is hard for a low-flying fighter to locate. A private drone, by contrast, fits the duration less well. The balloon hypothesis also has a regional context: Manipur borders Myanmar, and 2023 was the year surveillance balloons became an air-defense concern after the United States episode. A domestic or commercial balloon is the simplest reading, another state's balloon remains possible, and neither was checked, because the Indian state never identified the object.

The Air Force publicly acknowledged that it had activated its air defenses, and the Government answered Parliament in under four weeks. An unidentified object over a civil airport is treated as a danger to aviation whatever it is, as the minister said, and that safety criterion is what explains the closure.