Story Highlights
• United Airlines workers
reported saucer-shaped craft over Chicago,
Illinois
• Workers, including pilots: Object hovered over
airport, shot up through clouds
• FAA not investigating report, which it says
was made November 7
• "Our theory on this is that it was a weather
phenomenon," FAA says
CHICAGO, Illinois
(AP) -- -- Federal officials say it was probably
just some weird weather phenomenon, but a group of
United Airlines employees swear they saw a
mysterious, saucer-shaped craft hovering over O'Hare
Airport in November.
The workers, some of them pilots,
said the object didn't have lights and hovered over
an airport terminal before shooting up through the
clouds, according to a report in Monday's Chicago
Tribune.
The Federal Aviation
Administration acknowledged that a United supervisor
had called the control tower at O'Hare, asking if
anyone had spotted a spinning disc-shaped object.
But the controllers didn't see anything, and a
preliminary check of radar found nothing out of the
ordinary, FAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
"Our theory on this is that it was
a weather phenomenon," Cory said. "That night was a
perfect atmospheric condition in terms of low
(cloud) ceiling and a lot of airport lights. When
the lights shine up into the clouds, sometimes you
can see funny things."
The FAA is not investigating, Cory
said.
United spokeswoman Megan McCarthy
said company officials don't recall discussing any
such incident from November 7.
At least one O'Hare controller,
union official Craig Burzych, was amused by it all.
"To fly 7 million light years to
O'Hare and then have to turn around and go home
because your gate was occupied is simply
unacceptable," he said.
Copyright
2007 The
Associated Press.
