Captain Ron joins Dr. Todd Curtis to dissect the famous 2006 Chicago O’Hare UFO incident. They examine pilot testimonies and official explanations of this remarkable airport anomaly. Dr. Curtis offers expert analysis on aviation encounters with unexplained phenomena, comparing the O’Hare case to other pilot UFO sightings. This episode explores the impact of unidentified aerial objects on air traffic safety and public perception of UFOs.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You’re listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast Day
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the paranormal, supernatural, and the unexplained. Get ready now for
Beyond Contact with Captain Ron.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Welcome to our podcast. Please be aware the thoughts and
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(00:41):
your own research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hey everyone, it’s Captain Ron and each week on Beyond Contact,
we’ll explore the latest news in ufology, discuss some of
the classic cases, and bring you the latest information from
the newest cases as we talked with the top experts.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
Welcome back to another episode of Beyond Contact. I am
Captain Ron, and today we’re going to be speaking with
aviation safety engineer and educator doctor Todd Curtis. Doctor Curtis
has spent most of his career in some aspect of
aviation safety, particularly analyzing aviation safety data and understanding aviation risks.
While he’s been aware of the UFO and the UAP
(01:35):
issue for decades, it was the famous case in two
thousand and six at the Chicago O’Hare Airport, and in
particular the lack of any real official response to that
event that medium realize that this phenomenon had both an
aviation safety issue and a national security dimension that deserved
more of a serious approach. How you doing, Todd, Good
(01:57):
to see you.
Speaker 5 (01:57):
I’m doing just fine. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
We saw you at the twenty twenty four Contact in
the Desert conference. Would you think of that? I know
you’re a bit outside the UFO community and you’re firmly
entrenched in the aviation safety Would you think of the conference?
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Well, I was quite impressed by it because I knew
of the subject in general for quite some time, and
in fact, back in twenty fourteen, I was actually electronically
on the same show with Nick Pope, on a show
dealing with UFOs and airliners. So seeing these folks in
the flesh was a bit of a revelation.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
It’s a lot of fun. I saw your lecture there,
which was great, by the way, and it’s nice to
get the perspective from an aviation safety expert like yourself
on this phenomenon. This issue comes up from time to
time for us as we hear these different reports from
airline pilots and from military personnel, and we genuinely wonder,
you know, if the Pentagon really has this a tip
(02:49):
program they’ve admitted they have, and if these pilots really
are seeing these objects. As Ryan Grave says all the time,
isn’t there a genuine risk to flying?
Speaker 5 (03:00):
Well, certainly there’s a risk either a direct preas for example,
if you have some kind of aerospace vehicle I don’t
care what it is in the same airspace as you,
and you don’t know they’re there, you can have admit
air collision. But more likely is someone sees something or
the instruments send something and decisions are made and actions
are taken which don’t have to be taken, and you
might have a situation where oh my gosh, something’s coming
(03:22):
at me when it’s not and you lose control of
the aircraft. So regardless of what was causing that reaction,
whether it was a solid object, whether it was a projection,
it doesn’t really matter. My concern from the aviation and
safety perspective is how does it affect the people in
the system, the technology in the system, or the infrastructure
in general, whether that’s losing power, losing control, making poor decisions, etc.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Would you say that some people in the aviation community
take this more seriously than let’s say, the government may
lead on or the perception, maybe not even jumping to
the speculation that these could be et craft or anything,
just the fact that there seems to be stuff flying
around that I would think any pilot would be concerned
about whatever it is.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Well, certainly that sort of thing is taken seriously, but
not formally in a sense of Even in my experience
in aviation, both military and civilian, I’ve heard stories for years.
I thought, Okay, they saw something. It was really weird.
But there’s nowhere to go with this. In the military context,
when I was in the Air Force, if it didn’t
affect the mission, didn’t affect the equipment or the people
(04:27):
involved with the mission, it wasn’t something that you would report.
It was an interesting thing, but not really our concern.
In a civilian world as well, unless it has something
to do with a reportable event, for example, an accent
or incident, or it had something to do with interrupting
whatever the civilian mission is, for example, an airline flight
landing on time. He wouldn’t necessarily report it. And here’s
(04:50):
the important thing. It might be reported. It might be
talked about within a company, within an organization, within even
a whole geographical area. If there’s no formal requirement to
report it, the rest of the industry would have no
idea about it, including myself. Even though I keep close
track of all sorts of safety databases and aviation news.
(05:11):
Unless someone reports it formally, I really can’t go anywhere
with it.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Well, as a pilot, I would think, you know, you’ve
got to wonder to yourself, do you report it? Like
you said, if it doesn’t affect my flight, it doesn’t
affect my mission, do you report this? Should you report this?
It doesn’t seem like there’s any incentive really to do so.
In fact, there may be some reasons not to do so.
Speaker 5 (05:30):
Right well, some of the reasons might be a common sense,
and I talked about this in my presentation. The FAA
actually has in one of their regulations a specific suggestion
if you see a UFO, and they did use UFO
in this documentation, you can report it either to a
civilian organization, and they specifically mentioned the National UFO Reporting Center,
(05:51):
which is run by Peter Davenport, who was also aut
contact in the Desert You. I wrote to them many
times by email over the years. I had a nice
long talk with him, and that was probably the highlight
of my time.
Speaker 4 (06:02):
Oh, I’m so happy to hear that he’s such a
nice man.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Oh he is. And it’s great that the FA says
to go to him because he is a stand up guy.
He’s done fantastic work for decades compiling the things that
he compiles. But the problem with that is he is
not in the government. He is not supported by the government.
There is no formalized process to keep that database up
and running when for whatever reason, mister Davenport no longer
(06:28):
is able or willing to keep that database up. That’s
one part. But the second part that really got me upset.
Reported to your local law enforcement and I thought, Okay,
I’m not a lawyer when it comes to aviation, but
anything in the sky above the United States is federal responsibility,
the FAA, the Department of Defense, what have you. The
sky belongs to Uncle Sam, not to the States, not
(06:50):
to the local community. So let’s say I’m flying around
the Bay Area and again presentation. I had an example
where one of my flights in the Bay Area said, look,
I’m going in this there are several jurisdictions I’m flying over, state, local,
and federal. If I see something outside of my window,
outside of my windscreen, I might not know which organization
to call. And if I call the city, the county,
(07:12):
the state, and the federal jurisdiction of that piece of territory,
would they laugh in my face or would they take
me seriously? They would do neither. It’ll probably say things
I can’t say after contact and hang up in my face.
So that was not useful. And in my world the
years I’ve studied aviation safety, one of the most useful
things is to have solid objective data, preferably something that’s
(07:36):
been vetted by an organization that’s trusted by the aviation community.
So the rest of the community can take that data
and analyze it to whatever ends they have in mind.
But the first step is, after something is encountered or seen,
is it going to be put in a place where
it can be seen by the rest of the community.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Isn’t there possibly some repercussions for some of these pilots.
Maybe they don’t want to say that.
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Well, certainly, there have been many many cases over the years.
Probably the most famous was I believe it was nineteen
eighty six over Alaska where was the Japan Airlines where
the crew there was a three person flight crew. They
saw some extraordinary things over Alaska at night in the
vicinity of Anchorage. Not only that they were communicating with
the FAA, the FA the air traffic controllers were apparently
(08:20):
communicating with military assets as well. It was very well documented,
so well documented that there was a fairly decent analysis
done by the FAA. And as the story goes, this
was one that was told by I believe his name
is Jim Callahan, who was the FA official who was
running the presentation. They had a presentation a lot of
government representatives, including apparently someone from the National Intelligence area,
(08:44):
and after the meeting he was sold everything in this room,
we’re taking it with us. Well, everything in the room
was given, he followed orders, but everything that was in
his office or not in that room was not taken.
And he has four years gone out and said to
anyone who’s willing to listen, what they saw what they analyzed,
and just so, I mean, the useful information that was
(09:05):
from that analysis was fantastic, the best I’d ever seen.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
Absolutely, he specifically said he described it the pilot as
two small ships and a mothership. He used that word,
which is unique. There was no sign of anything else
on his radar or ground control’s radar even though they
saw these three craft.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
This is nineteen eighty six. This was years before the
first still aircraft was known to the public, So to
have something that was apparently solid and not reflecting radar
energy was not something that was common. That was very anomalous,
although they didn’t use the word back then and going forward,
this is something where that pilot, the captain, who was
(09:44):
very public about what he had seen, was actually grounded
by his airline for a year more because he was
public with what he saw. So, yes, there are professional repercussions. Now,
going back further in aviation history, this is something that
started in the nineteen fifties and sixties high altitude pilot’s
military pilots who saw unusual phenomena high.
Speaker 4 (10:04):
In the sky.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
Fast forward to the eighties. It wasn’t until the Space
Shuttle era that they actually started studying what they call
jets and sprites, upper atmospheric lightning that goes from the
upper part of thunderstorms to the lower reaches of space.
Bizarre looking.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I’ve seen pictures of it that’s crazy. It looks like
almost like an X ray kind of gone bad. Like
it’s kind of crazy.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
In the day, if you reported that, you’d be grounded.
But now it’s like, oh, we understand this, we’ll note
it when it happens, and we’ll see if there’s any
effects on the aircraft. And that’s the way it should
go when it comes to unusual phenomena in the sky.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Yeah, it’s interesting that those guys got grounded, and like
you said here, this guy got grounded if you reported
such a thing, you know, I can add anecdotally that
I’ve spoke to a couple of pilots myself and an
astronaut actually, who each have given me incredible sightings, and
yet they didn’t talk about it publicly or on the air.
So there’s still, you know, something about people not wanting
to report that stuff in this field. When we come back, Todd,
(10:58):
we’re going to talk about a few more cases. Is
similar to the one we just talked about. You are
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Speaker 4 (12:35):
We are back on Beyond Contact. It’s Captain Ron talking
to doctor Todd Curtis. Doctor Curtis, let’s talk about some
of these famous UFO cases that have involved other aircraft,
starting with the case I mentioned in your intro, which
is the two thousand and six UFO case that happened
at Chicago O’Hare Airport. We’re at least a dozen employees
(12:56):
claim to have witnessed a metallic saucer shaped craft hovering
over a game. Do you remember that case?
Speaker 5 (13:01):
I remember well. In fact, that case was the triggering
event that maybe become professionally interested in whatever was going on,
because this was November two thousand and six, nearly six
years after nine to eleven, four or five years after
TSA was up and running, after Homeland security was up
and running, where airport and aviation security was top of
(13:22):
mind with the government, and you have something to this day,
I don’t know what it is, and neither does anyone
else that was violating the airspace, not over an airport,
but one of the most important airports in the world,
the busiest airports in the world, one of the top
five or ten, and nothing officially was done. Covering over
a terminal in full view of personnel on the ground,
(13:43):
no investigation by the FAA or the FBI or whomever.
I said to myself, Look, there have been hundreds of
millions of tax dollars going to these organizations. Here is
a humongous example of Hey, investigate this, because check it out.
If I’m a bad guy or bad woman sitting over
across the world thinking, if I want to attack an
airport in America, all I have to do is make
(14:04):
it look like a flying saucer and I can just
waltz right in. No one’s going to touch me. So
again I got mad, and instead of writing an angry
letter to the editor, I said, what can I do
about this? From my professional perspective, So I started to
ask questions, questions like what’s the risk? And risk is
a very specific term in the regulatory world of aviation.
(14:24):
Risk is something you can measure. It’s a combination of
some likelihood of an unwanted event, the consequences of that event,
and the magnitude of those things put together. For example,
chance of plane crashing very very low, the consequence many
people killed. So yes, that is a risk. You can
measure it, you can hang a number on it. What
is the action, what was the effect on the aircraft,
(14:45):
what was the damage to the system. So looking at
it from that perspective, I began to get a much
better feel for it. And subsequent to Chicago, the next
triggering event was Leslie King. She had her book in
twenty ten about UFOs generals, and she had documented cases
around the world where you had high level officials France, US,
Ron elsewhere who spoke in detail and sometimes in their
(15:08):
own words about what they had experienced. I was so
impressed with that. I actually reached out to her and
this is what twenty thirteen, which actually came on my
podcast on my website, and we had a lovely conversation.
It’s still out there on the internet. You can here
Leslie and I, yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:21):
It’s great. Actually, that’s when her UFO book came up.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
And my attitude really hasn’t changed since then. What has
changed is my ability to go out there and see
if there’s any additional evidence out there, not just evidence
from people talking online or whatever, but are there formal
reports in any sort of database that’s reputable that has
these things. And there is one database funded by the
United States government which has in my opinion, bona fide
(15:45):
UFO slash UAP cases in them. Some of them are
just pretty stunning as well. This is NASA’s Aviation Safety
Reporting System database, something that’s been up and running since
the late nineteen seventies, where the purpose is to encourage
pilot’s and others to send in reports that affect aviation safety.
And the thing about this is anonymous you send in
(16:06):
a report, it ends up on their database. Your name’s
not associated with it, the aircraft hill number isn’t associated
with it, your company name isn’t associated with And NASA
is very proud of the fact they’ve had I think
it’s something like one and a half to two million
reports over the years. They’ve never had the privacy of
the reporting people violated. And here’s the big end. They
have a staff of people who review all these experts
(16:29):
in aviation air traffic control mechanics. So if you put
in some report, they’ll look it over. They might even
call you up again ask you more questions. So is
it possible you can put in a BIGUS report. Sure,
But professionally, if you’re a pilot or mechanic, air traffic controller,
flight attendant, anyone who has to be certified by the FAA,
and you lie to the FAA via NASA, many things
(16:50):
can happen to you, none of them good, So there’s
a huge incentive to tell it to them straight.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
It’s great that you have plausible deniability by using that
system if you don’t have to put your name on it.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Absolutely as good as the database is. And I did
find literally thirteen events which I talked about the presentation
that I thought fit the criteria that I have for
what a UAP is. I didn’t see any events around events,
around times and places you would think. For example, I
went to the database which goes back to nineteen eighty eight,
I said, okay, what about the month of November two
(17:20):
thousand and six, by the way right there exactly, they
give you the month, they don’t give you the day.
So I said, all right, let me give the month
of November, State of Illinois. How many reports were in there?
I went through every report none of them had something
to do with the o’haravan Stephenville, Texas, which was during
the George W. Bush administration where there was no wait,
that’s no way, Stephenville, Texas. I went through the entire
(17:42):
month nothing. Phoenix Lights ninety seven. I did Phoenix, Arizona,
and Nevada for that entire month. Nothing by the way,
Phoenix Lights Reportedly Kurt Russell, who was a licensed pilot
at the time he saw whatever this object was, has
talked about it in public since then, but to the
best my analogy, hasn’t filed a formal report or informal report.
Speaker 4 (18:02):
Well, he called it in. There’s a recording. You can
actually find the recording of him calling it in. We
were going to invite him to contact in the desert.
Because of that, I don’t think he filed with this.
It doesn’t seem like people are filing using this system.
You just named all these things and there are no
reports about this. Well.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
The aviation saftory reporting system is something that if you
are in aviation you may or may not be aware of,
in part because there are two kinds of data you
tend to have when it comes to aviation safetry reporting.
That which is required to be reported, that which is voluntary.
If you have an accident as defined by the NTSB,
you’re required to report it within so many days where
you’ll be in big trouble, and if it’s a serious
(18:39):
incident also it has to be reported. Just about everything
else is voluntary. For example, there’s a database called the
Near Midair Collision System Database. Where he didn’t have a
midair collision. You might not have even been in a
situation where traffic controllers reported it. But if you’re a
pilot and you’re in a situation, it’s like, oh my gosh,
let report this almost accident that happened. There’s another database
(19:00):
for wildlife strikes aircraft, another one for laser encounters, another
one for errant drones drones are misbehaving. These are all voluntary,
as is the ASRS system of NASA.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I see very interesting, Todd. I actually remember this case
that we were talking about earlier, about the two thousand
and six oh haair case, and I remember it came
out and then it just sort of went away and
we never really got an explanation. You know. This is
another example of the government not acknowledging anything about anything
unidentified in the sky. I recently mentioned on the air
how there’s this disconnect somehow in our government. On one hand,
(19:31):
they’ve come out recently and acknowledged the Advanced Aerospace Threat
Identification program that they had, that that they were doing. That,
they acknowledged that several of these leaked videos are authentic
military videos. They acknowledged in two thousand and one that
the Director of the National Intelligence released a report saying
they couldn’t explain one hundred and forty three out of
one hundred and forty four UAP cases that it looked at. Yet,
on the other hand, we have this long history from
(19:54):
the government of blatant denial of anything to do with
UFO phenomenon, going back to Project Sign, Grunge Blue Book,
the other so called reports, the Robertson Panel, the kind
of committee, all of these things. Then in twenty twenty
four we get this new department called the All Domain
Anomaly Resolution Office, and we thought we’re going to get
some real information here, But they came out with this
(20:14):
ridiculous conclusion that there’s absolutely nothing to see, not even
acknowledging that there might be objects in the sky that
we can’t explain. It’s just simply not realistic. How do
you feel about the government responses like this.
Speaker 5 (20:26):
Well, the government at which full disclosure, I used to
be a part of. I was an Air Force officer
and I was assigned both the Flight Test Center at
Edwards and I was actually at the National Security Agency
last part of my service, so I got a look
to see at the intelligence community from the inside. So
the government has many parts when it comes to aviation,
and generally you have the civilian part and you have
the military part, and many of their safety programs and
(20:49):
reporting systems are quite separate from one another. If you’re
in a civilian aircraft something goes seriously wrong and there’s
a crash, there’ll be an investigation, there’ll be a detailed report.
Anyone around the world can download report and the supporting
documents of it. The same sort of accident happens in
the military. You’ll be lucky if you get a one
page summary saying this is the accident and this is
(21:09):
kind of what happened, and that’s it. My colleagues and
I did a podcast about an accident on Air Force
one about five years ago that cost four million dollars
worth of damage. Someone used the wrong tools, on an
auction system. The average person would think this is crazy.
There was only a one page report available to the public.
The details were in the military file somewhere it can
access them. But let’s go back in time to Chicago
(21:32):
two thousand and six. Was the air requirement for the
FA to report this event to the best of my knowledge,
or was not a formal regulatory requirement in the regulations
that dictate how the FA behaves that require them to
report it. Could you, as a civilian ask for a
Freedom of Information Act request with things like air traffic
control tapes in a reports, et cetera. You could have
(21:52):
you put it on a public database online easily accessible.
You put it behind a foil wall. It’s available puts
you have to work for it. So, in my opinion,
there was no reporting of it because there is no
requirement to report it.
Speaker 4 (22:05):
We’re going to take a break there. You’re listening to
Beyond Contact and the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM
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Speaker 4 (23:36):
We are back on Beyond Contact. We’re talking with doctor
Todd Curtis. Doctor Curtis, do you know of any cases
involving a plane hitting one of these unknown objects like
a UAP or even like a close call with one.
Speaker 5 (23:46):
I don’t, and I literally looked at thousands of accent
instant reports over the decades. I’ve been in the business,
and this for one of two reasons. A it never happened,
or b it happened, and whoever wrote reports rooted in
such a way to write around the fact that this
was something highly unusual and more full disclosure. Had I
been in well, I was going for a number of
(24:07):
years as a safety engineer, which I’ve never seen a
report at going. But had we seen one, I’m pretty
combident we would have done exactly that. It’s like, Okay,
is there a plane crashed, the reports are something really
bizarre hit it. We’ll write a full report and do
our level best not to mention the bizarre part, because
otherwise it would not be seen as credible for our
home colleagues. And also we might call some bad blood
(24:31):
with people we have to have a long term relationship
with in the government, so there is an incentive to
I wouldn’t say a lie, but I would say tell
as little truth as possible. And again, well, but yeah,
that’s not a conspiracy, that’s just you know, organizational and
bureaucratic survival at work.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
I’m going to use that in my dating world. I
was like, I think that’s a good one.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Todd.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
I liked that, Hey, do you feel any of these
things could be anomalous? Where do you sit? Do you
feel like any of this could be something unknown?
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Well? Absolutely, there is one of the thirteen that were
in the ASRS database. I talked about my presentation. There
were a couple where what I would call conventional objects
in very unconventional places. For example, you’re flying fifteen or
so miles from New York and you see a missile
go by, and the pilot reported I could see that
(25:23):
the missile had a rounded shape in the front. I
thought to myself, Okay, I’ve been around a few missiles
here and there in the military. How close do you
have to be or how big does this missile have
to be for you to know what shape it was?
And by the way, you’re like fifteen miles out of
New York City. There are no military test ranges anywhere
near that territory. Having a missile flying without everyone knowing
(25:45):
about it, the FA says, hey, we have missile tests
going on between this hour and this hour.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
Avoid this space.
Speaker 5 (25:50):
To have someone fire this without going through the protocols
would put that program, whatever that program is, in jeopardy.
Not to mention all the flights or put in jeopardy.
So yeah, that’s one kind of anomally in that it’s
a conventional object in an unconventional space. There is at
least one other one in there. It’s like, I have
no idea what this is. This looks like nothing I’ve
(26:11):
ever seen. And whatever was flying this thing had extraordinary
piloting skills, well beyond what you expect from even an
above average pilot.
Speaker 4 (26:20):
What do you speculate that could be? Do you think
it could be a test military craft? Do you think
it could be drones? Could it be a foreign government?
Could it be something off world?
Speaker 5 (26:28):
I’ll give you a very short description of the most
bizarre on and and I’ll let you tell me what
you think. A sailplane pilot which is no engine on it.
He’s flying near all but in New York. He’s about
thirty five hundred feet above of the ground. There’s another
person in back. This person’s first flight in the glider.
He sees something that’s about six foot tall, too small
to have a person side of. It has like a
speckled shiny rainbow thing on the top, a couple of
(26:51):
antenna thingies sticking out on the bottom, and he sees
it flying in my estimation, about three hundred miles an hour,
very close to the ground. Okay, drones existed into they
fifteen drones going three hundred miles an hour. I don’t
think so. But it gets worse or more bizarre. It
goes toward this distant mountain. Then it comes directly at
this lider, passes by his right wing, doesn’t U turn,
(27:15):
ends up forming off about fifty feet off his left way.
That’s an airshow kind of maneuver that you would see
the Blue Angels of the Thunderbirds do, and you would
not see them do it unless everyone involved knew exactly
what was going on. This was a sailplane pilot who
does not have the ability to do juking and driving
maneuvers to get out of the way, and this thing
with extraordinary capability is flying in formation and I love it.
(27:38):
The statement said in the right up. This is why
I decided to go back to the airport, And I thought,
this is a smart pilot. He’s getting the heck out
of dotage. The wait there’s more. Two similar objects about
six foot toll come out of the clouds, form up
with the first one flies off into the distance. Now
any one small part of that could be a conventional
craft of some kind. Everything put together makes no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
What about you, I ask a UAP case, I mean
that is by definition right there, that’s an unidentified phenomenon
going on right there. I think that’s a great one.
I’ve never seen it.
Speaker 5 (28:13):
It’s a certified, vetted, government sponsored database that is open
to the entire world to go look at. And again
in my presentation I links to the actual code number.
You can go in there yourself, download this, look at yourself,
scratch your head and say, what’s going on?
Speaker 4 (28:29):
Right? How often do you stumble across things that are
of interest like that?
Speaker 5 (28:33):
Very rarely? Because again I very specifically said to myself,
as a little research project, is there anything in any
formal database that looks as bizarre? I would go to
the NTSB database, do searches for the word UFO or
UAP and whatnot. I thought, let me try the Aviation
Safety Reporting System. That’s when I hit PAYDART. I only
did three searchers. One had a single word missile about
(28:54):
four hundred events, like three or four of them were legitimate.
Another single word UAV, which is for the acronym for
a drone unmanned aerospace vehicle. They were like sixty of those,
and four of them were legit, and there was actually
a coded variable in the database for UFO. So I did, Okay,
let me do a general search UFO. You at p
on adentified flight object, etc.
Speaker 4 (29:15):
Cetera.
Speaker 5 (29:16):
There were nine of them, six for legit, and I
quit doing a search after that. Hey, I did three
searches in like twenty minutes and I found thirteen events.
If I spent a whole lot more time doing this,
I’ll probably find more in that specific database. So this
is my challenge to the audience. Go check out the
Aviation Safety Reporting System, figure out how to use their
search process, which.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
Is very easy.
Speaker 5 (29:38):
See if you can find something, please.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
That is awesome. We should all take a look at
that and see if we can’t come up with more.
Doctor Curtis, let’s talk about that San Francisco case at
twenty thirteen.
Speaker 5 (29:48):
This was a conventional accident. This was a Triple seven
on July sixth, twenty thirteen, happened to be a Saturday,
and it crashed, killing three people on board. I’d been
a blowing engineer years before work on the Triple seven project.
This is the very first fatal crash of a Triple seven,
and I was out of voting at that time and
did the occasional media interview. And as soon as I
found out that Saturday morning it’s a crash, I said
(30:11):
to myself, my god, it’s Triple seven. And no one
called me. Typically when there’s a major airline crash in
the US, I get all sorts of phone calls, emails,
text messages. I had nothing. I called around to producers
I knew, and I called down to IT line. I said, hey,
you know I’m in New York. It’s there a studio
I can go to. Somebody won’t ask me a question.
I said, oh yeah, I go down the road Columbus Circle.
We have a studio there. I hadn’t followed CNN, so
(30:31):
I didn’t realize they had basically moved their major operations
in New York. So I walk into this big room,
fifty desk. Don Lemon’s off in the corner, little studio
giving us talk. I said, oh my god. I thought
i’d be a little room for five minutes. I’ll have
five minutes of Don Lemon. This will make my day.
This is a tragic event. People had died but I
had a job to do. Give some information, then go
out and party. It’s like Saturday in New York. Why
(30:53):
did they call me and let me come in? Because
everyone was on vacation. Their producers couldn’t be caught. There
are all sorts of experts who they couldn’t call. It’s
like I showed up. It’s like, okay, my five minutes
rough up. I’m about to leave this. Oh, doctor Curtis,
would you like to stay a little bit longer. Six
hours later, I leave the studio and all day I’m thinking, okay,
(31:13):
we’re on live. I have to give some useful information,
very little information starting off, and I try to keep
it my usual EMO is I’m going to stick with
facts and data. If I have an opinion, I’ll stay
in an opinion. I’ll try and give some context to
similar accidents in that city or that aircraft type, et cetera.
(31:37):
And it was an eye opening experience seeing media work
in real time at CNN. I thought, my god, this
is like the pinnacle of live news. And I’m the
only guy that got you. Gotta be kidding me. You
are mister Fax and Data.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
That is for sure. You absolutely could be like that investigator.
It’s great, fascinating stuff. We’ll be right back here talking
more with doctor t Curtis. You’re listening to Beyond Contact
on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
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Speaker 6 (32:45):
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Speaker 2 (33:01):
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Speaker 4 (33:32):
We are back on Beyond Contact. We’re talking with doctor
Todd Curtis. Here. Todd, you brought up Boeing Man in
twenty twenty four. There’s been a lot of stuff happening
with Boeing. They had the door fall off, they had
the wheel fall off. What do you feel about all.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
That respect the Boeing or any entity. If you have
a crash of a certain type of a certain aircraft type,
a certain airline, or in a certain country, there tends
to be heightened awareness of anything happening in that same context.
So Boeing after their seven three seven Next events, there’s
a heightened awareness when anything happens. For example, will falling
off an airliner happens multiple times a year around the world.
(34:07):
Very rarely is it national news, but if it involves
a Boeing aircraft, it’s national news. Anything dealing with the
seven three seven Max. People could have a hangnail in coach,
it’ll be national news if it’s on the seven three
seven Max. So I got a call. This is one
of those cases where I did get a call. They said, well,
doctor Curtis, what do you think about what just happened?
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Now?
Speaker 5 (34:24):
About two days before, there’s been a crash in Japan.
No one got killed, but it was like a spectacular crash,
everything burned up. I start talking about the Japan crashes.
Oh no, it’s a seven three seven Max. It’s like,
what door fell off? What are you talking about? I
look up that model of the seven three seven This
was a later model of the seven three seven. They
actually put a different door in an area of the
aircraft that wasn’t on the earlier model. So it took
(34:46):
me like a half hour to get my head around
the fact that there’s another door here. What’s a plug door? Oh,
it’s supposed to be an emergency exit door, unless you
don’t have that many seats and you’re not required to
put an emergency accept so you put what they call
a plug door. It’s a simple fix, basically bolted in.
It stays there permanently. This is a no brainer technology.
I’ve never heard of a plug door coming out. I
(35:07):
called up a former NTSP board number. I said, have
you ever heard of a plug door coming off of
an aircraft? He said now, And he was a former mechanic,
he’d been working on airplanes for decades. So yeah, and
it happened to be Boeing in the seven thirty seven Max.
So everybody, rightfully so knows about this plug door. BOI
rightfully so is being taken to the woodshed and the
(35:29):
company was convicted of a crime, but no individuals were
So is the CEO going to jail now? Unfortunately he
has a golden parachute and he’s out the door. That’s
an opinion.
Speaker 4 (35:39):
Yeah, no, we saw that. Yeah, absolutely, Dodd do you
you I think said as of May twenty twenty four,
the FAA and the Department Defense still do not have
a systematic or comprehensive process for collecting and organizing UAP reports.
Is that still the case, I’m assuming it is.
Speaker 5 (35:55):
Let me add that there is no publicly acknowledge systematic
method methodology on the military or the National security side,
and there is definitely nothing public on the FA side.
And by systematic we’re talking something as simple as what
is the definition of a UAP the military and National
security side of the house have is a working definition.
NASA actually did an independent study team back in twenty
(36:18):
twenty three. They published the report in twenty twenty four
where they had to generalize definition of what a UAP
is and absent one from the FAA or the NTSP,
actually put together for the purpose of the presentation, what
I think is a reasonable definition of the UAP, which would,
among other things, include a classic UFO and like I
said earlier in our discussion, a conventional aircraft and an
(36:41):
unconventional location or a phenomena that is simply unknown and unexplainable.
I would like them to follow something not exactly mine,
but something where it’s comprehensive, it’s objected. It’s something where
if you’re a pilot or an air traffic controller and
you see a UAP, you’d like to look up in
the REGs and say, Okay, does this fit the definition?
Speaker 4 (37:01):
Yes or no?
Speaker 5 (37:02):
If yes, I go reported over here that system does
not yet exist.
Speaker 4 (37:06):
And you say that this information, forget all this alien
et curant whatever. You say that just compiling all this
information using that data, you’re saying even old data from
fifty years ago can help us with safety in flight today. Correct. Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
Aviation safety is what I like to describe as something
that does not care about time or space. There are
events that happen almost one hundred years ago. For example,
everyone in the world has seen the famous picture of
the Zeppelin going up in Lake Hers, New Jersey, Brandenberg
Classic case, and some of the elements of that you
can still learn from today if you’re in the aviation
(37:42):
safety business. So yes, if you have an encounter from
fifty years ago, there’s certain characteristics. You have one from
fifty minutes ago. Certain characteristics are there similarities. Is there
a pattern that one should look for? And if you
had this certain pattern, does that inform you as to
what counter moves a pilot should make should they encounter
something like this. If you knew nothing about starlink, you’re
(38:02):
flying along and you see fifty lights in a row
going across the sky above you. You’re flying at thirty
thousand feet, your first thought might be, that’s at fifty
thousand feet because actually, because of the speed and the
distance looks like the speed of a stratospheric airliner going over.
You say, who the heck is flying fifty airliners in
a row without reporting? For shure, So again, if no
(38:28):
one feels that they have the ability or we respect
it if they report this. If no one reports this,
you cannot analyze it. If you can’t analyze it, you
can’t make rational decisions as to what you do next.
You can’t assess the risk and therefore assess the potential
safety impacts without the data.
Speaker 4 (38:46):
You’ve mentioned these drones several times today. Do you know
where we’re at with the drone technology? Because it feels
to me, like, you know, these things seem like they
could be quiet. They run on hydrogen or electric there’s
different things they’re proposing. It seems like we’re on the
but these drones becoming more manned drones I’m talking about
coming out soon. This might lead to a whole bunch
(39:06):
of uaper reports because people won’t know what they’re seeing.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Well, for that, I recommended that people look at all
the many, many, many videos that are coming out out
of Ukraine. The evolution of drone technique and technology is
like massive going on over there. There are things that
I look at that and it’s like, yeah, this is
conventional technology being used in ways that the military minds
and the Pentagon never thought of because they have to
(39:30):
rapidly evolve their technique and their skills in the field.
So yes, this will inform the design of future technology
and how that future technology is used. Right now today,
you or I can off the shelf, go to Amazon
get a semi autonomous drone where you can program it
to fly at certain place, take pictures and come back.
(39:51):
It’s only a small hop, skip and a jump to
program it to do something other than take pictures. And
you see that happening in Ukraine as we speak.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
I can imagine this is going to get get even
more convoluted than it is already. Before I let you go,
I definitely want to ask you about You’ve been in
aviation for a long time, obviously. Have you looked at
these different videos, the famous military videos that came out,
like the TikTok video, Tictac video, and the go Fast
and gimbal Have you seen those? And what are your
(40:18):
thoughts on those?
Speaker 5 (40:20):
I have, and I sort of casually looked at them
until the military the government said yes, these are authentic
videos and we don’t know what they are. It’s like,
what you’re acknowledging that this multi billion dollar over decades
technology caught something that you can’t explain. Now, I’m really intrigued. Yes,
I have seen those and seen many others, and some
(40:43):
of them it’s like, Okay, I’ve been around aviation for
a while. And in fact, when nineteen eighties, when I
was at Edwards, I was working at a test facility
where they had some of the early infrared targeting systems
for aircraft. This is like what eighty four eighty five
and crewed by today’s standards, but even back then it
was like a revelation to see what this technology could do.
(41:06):
And again we’ve had forty years of improving computers and
microchips and everything else. So not just infrared, not just
visible light. You also have electromagnetic sensing systems on board aircraft.
You also have multiple platforms. You might have space based
assets combined with land based assets, and you know, in
(41:27):
the atmosphere assets and human eyeballs looking at the same thing.
Compiling that information and then coming to a conclusion way
more complex than just a single tic TAC video. This
happens on a daily basis. Oh wow, if something big
happens like in other Phoenix lights. Phoenix Lights was ninety seven,
(41:47):
Chicago’s two thousand and six. This is before the iPhone era.
If it happens today, it will be like Kobe’s helicopter crash.
You have all kinds of dor cams, you know, audio crams,
you can go on the flight tracking system and flight
the track. We’ll have more information you can shake a
stick at.
Speaker 4 (42:04):
So if something I think about that now and Roswell happened,
nobody had a camera and nobody knew it. Now, my god,
I think if something did happen, we’re going to have
a lot of footage. Oh yeah, wow, Well we’re gonna
have to stop there, Todd, I really really appreciate it.
I really enjoyed talking to you about this stuff. So
thanks for coming on. Well, thanks for having me absolutely brother,
Thanks for listening to Beyond Contact. We’re going to be
(42:25):
back next week with an all new episode. You can
follow me Captain Ron on Twitter and Instagram at CID
Underscore Captain Ron. Stay connected by checking out Contact intheesert
dot com. Stay open minded and rational as we explore
the unknown right here on the iHeartRadio and Coast to
Coast am Paranormal Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
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iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 6 (43:06):
Mm hmm
