Chile.Paposo · the lights seen by three airline crews over the desert

On 5 November 2023, at 22:47 local time, a Sky Airlines Airbus A320 took off for Santiago as flight SKU307; according to SEFAA's investigation it left from Arica (Chacalluta), although the summary of the same report says Iquique, and the departure time is not labelled, but judging by the arrival time it is local. At about 23:37, already 6 November in UTC (02:37), it was flying at 39,000 feet along airway UQ803, over the desert, south of Antofagasta, and its crew called the Iquique Area Control Centre; five minutes later it passed east of the cove of Paposo. The transcript of the audio, which SEFAA included in its report, reads: 'Just to report that… er… the UFOs that were seen a few months ago, because it was those, we have them in sight… on about course 210'. The controller acknowledged and at once asked another flight further south on the same route, LATAM's LXP901, at 35,000 feet: 'Do you have some objects to the SW in sight?'. 'Correct. Also between 220 and 200… lights appear and disappear'. Were they above its altitude? 'Yes. Very, very high'. A third aircraft, JetSMART's JAT007, at 37,250 feet and further south, which was on the same frequency, broke in unprompted: 'Also sees them. They are… four… lights turning… at random'.

According to the report SEFAA received, the SKU307 crew saw them suspended in the air for more than a minute, always to the southwest of their position, changing colour and with no size given, with no noise, no instrument anomalies and no warning from the collision-avoidance system. The same report notes that other crews had earlier reported four lights above their altitude, which seemed suspended in the sky and flashed colours at random. The office placed the three aircraft using the synchronised radar video, between 02:37 and 02:40 UTC, all heading south (for SKU307 the report gives inconsistent headings, 210° and 292°, the first perhaps taken from the 'course 210' of the call; its own radar table shows 178°, that of a flight towards Santiago). It asked the crews for testimony and images. The captain of LXP345, following on the same airway, replied by email on 17 November that he had also seen the lights, that he associated them with satellite traffic and that he had no images. The report says the captain of JAT007 was the only one who responded to the request, which clashes with that email, and that his images and testimony, which would have made it possible to fix the time, path and appearance of what was seen, never arrived.

SEFAA reconstructed the sky visible from each aircraft at the start of its conversation with Iquique and verified that satellites crossed between 200° and 220° of azimuth, above the horizon, although not necessarily on paths like those described, and it also pointed to the pass of the Chinese space station Tiangong, which crossed SKU307's horizon from west to east. The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs launch register showed none immediately before, although the office warned that those notifications arrive late. Its conclusion, in June 2024, put forward the hypothesis of conventional orbital traffic, but that 'this could not be proven for lack of means of analysis that would allow these objects to be identified', and it closed the case as a 'Report' (Relato).

What sets the case apart is its witnesses: three crews in three different aircraft, tens of miles apart, spoke live by radio of lights to the southwest, and the Iquique control recording preserves it. They were not wholly independent: SKU307 spoke of suspended lights, the controller asked LXP901 whether it had 'some objects to the SW' and suggested they were above its altitude, and JAT007 heard everything on the same frequency. A fourth captain saw them too. What is missing is what would allow them to be identified: no image, no instrumental record of the object and no precise time or position in the sky, so SEFAA could only say that there were satellites in the sector, not which was which.

The report does not stand alone. In the same month and along the same stretch of routes, SEFAA studied three other crew reports of similar lights and proposed satellites for all three. On 10 November, the crew of LXP377, from Calama to Santiago, saw north of the ENTOP waypoint two to four lights moving fast, changing position and intensity, for about half an hour, and the crew of LXP345 saw the same; the office established that the Sun was some 44° below the horizon, right in the direction they were looking, and that satellites of the OneWeb constellation were crossing that sector, and concluded that what was reported was consistent with sunlight reflecting off spacecraft orbiting above 500 kilometres, although without images it closed it as a 'Report'. On 20 November, LXP905 and a Copa Boeing 737 saw white lights to the southeast and ahead; SEFAA identified in that sector a group of seven OneWeb satellites, five Starlink and two Iridium lit by the Sun, and classified it as 'Probably explained'. On 23 November, the crew of FACh922, an Air Force flight, filmed with a phone three lights that flashed on and off like stars and then began to move; with the video, analysed frame by frame, the office identified three Starlink satellites and the debris of the Chinese weather satellite Fengyun 1C. And two days after this report, on 8 November, the pilot of an Argentine Learjet passing Calama reported a bright light that the office also linked to orbiting objects (↗).

There is also a precedent in the same corridor: a year earlier, on 8 November 2022, three crews flying to Santiago from Iquique, Calama and Antofagasta reported one to three lights to the south, and SEFAA found that conditions existed for them to be the Antares rocket and the Cygnus NG-18 spacecraft, although without images it closed the case as a 'Report'. The report does not say what SKU307 meant by 'the UFOs that were seen a few months ago'. None of those findings concerns this night, and the witness who spoke of satellites did so days later; but the night corridor of northern Chile, with the Sun well below the horizon and satellites still lit at high altitude, produces this kind of report regularly, and when there was video, the explanation was orbital.