Peru.Jorge Chávez · double sighting (DIFAA)

In the early hours of 27 February 2019, at 06:30 UTC (1:30 AM in Lima), the control tower of Jorge Chávez International Airport, in Callao, observed to the west of the station, out over the sea, two objects it could not identify, at about 8,000 feet (some 2,400 meters). The tower alerted two aircraft waiting to take off, LANPERÚ 2437 (an A321 on a flight plan to Córdoba, Argentina, at the runway 15 holding point) and LATAM ECUADOR 1442 (an A319 bound for Quito, at the runway 33 holding point), and both crews reported having them in sight. The report does not describe the objects' shape, colour, brightness or motion: those details ('very luminous', 'at San Lorenzo Island') appear later, in the press coverage and in the DIFAA adviser's account.

The sighting was set down in an operational document. That same day the tower transmitted an Accident and/or Incident Report (RAI) over the aeronautical network, which CORPAC's AIS-ARO team (the Corporación Peruana de Aeropuertos y Aviación Comercial, the state company that provides air traffic control) stamped as received on 27 February. Its description field says that from the tower 'apparently two UFOs' are observed 'west of the station approx 8000FT', that one of them 'appears intermittently on the radar screen at 5NM RDL274' (five nautical miles on the 274 radial, almost due west) and that the area control center supervisor was notified; the additional-information field notes that at 07:12 UTC the objects were no longer in view of the tower. That is about forty minutes, too long for a meteor or a fleeting flash, in Peru's most closely watched airspace. The report leaked onto social media within days, and ufologist Anthony Choy presented it on radio as the first official report of its kind in the country, although he placed the objects 'above runway 33', which the document does not say: it puts them five miles out, over the sea. It should be read on its own terms: it is the standard incident form, written by the controller on duty, and the word 'UFO' there means what it means in aviation, an object the tower did not identify; the operator, registration and route fields read TBN, to be notified.

The Peruvian Air Force's Department for the Investigation of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena (DIFAA) (see ↗) received the reports through the Center for Aerospace Interests (CINAE). The case came to light in June 2019, when CNN en Español reported that the FAP had confirmed it for the first time, in a verification it attributed to the Directorate of Aerospace Information and Interests (DINIA): it quoted Major General Robert Baxerias Vucanovich, who said the occurrence did happen and that air operations were never at risk, and Marco A. Barraza, presented as the office's lead investigator, who spoke of two objects over the sea, near San Lorenzo Island, and of a confirmation on the radar screen. Barraza was not an FAP officer: at the 2013 relaunch he was listed on DIFAA's civilian advisory board as a researcher and communicator. The next day the FAP issued a statement specifying that it had not confirmed any UFO sighting, only the existence of reports submitted for analysis, and that as an institution it could only speak to duly verified facts. Baxerias told Perú21 that his institution never spoke of a UFO and that what was seen could have been a kite, one of Google's Project Loon balloons or debris in the air.

The Lima double sighting brings together qualified witnesses (trained commercial pilots), institutional corroboration (the control tower that coordinates and documents), a sensor independent of the human eye (CORPAC radar), and a state office (DIFAA) that received and logged the reports. What the case lacks is the institutional confirmation the press credited it with: the FAP denied it by statement the next day.

What it does not do is prove what they were. Two objects seen at night over the sea, with no shape or motion described, admit a list of conventional candidates that the investigation, as far as has been published, did not rule out: drones (increasingly common in 2019), balloons, vessels, reflections or low bright stars. A position calculation for that hour (done by UAP Codex) shows there were no planets to the west (Jupiter and the Moon were in the east) but there were two of the brightest stars in the sky: Sirius, to the west-southwest, sinking from about 17° to about 7° in altitude between 06:30 and 07:12 UTC, and Procyon, almost due west (azimuth 282° to 279°), sinking from 26° to 16°. The matching direction is suggestive, but the sky was clear (CAVOK in the airport's 06:00 and 07:00 UTC METARs) and at 07:12 Procyon was still 16° and Sirius 7° above the horizon, so the disappearance at that time does not fit setting stars well; nor do they explain the radar return at five miles. That is why the best astronomical candidate loses strength, though it does not vanish. There is also unexamined material: according to Panamericana, citing Radio Capital, the lights were seen from the terminal itself and photographs circulated, and two videos attributed to the sighting were posted on YouTube; nobody has analysed them. The objects' only-intermittent appearance on radar is ambivalent: it may indicate a small or low-radar-cross-section object, but also a weak echo or a spurious return. And the high command went further than any adviser: Baxerias himself offered conventional explanations (a kite, a Loon balloon, debris in the air). The case thus shows two things: that a multi-sensor sighting in controlled airspace deserves to be treated with procedural seriousness, and that in Peru one must separate the voice of DIFAA's civilian advisers from the official position of the Air Force, which only speaks to verified facts. Reading an adviser's statement as state confirmation is exactly the mistake the June 2019 coverage made.