On the morning of May 30, 2016, an Air Canada Express flight from Montreal to Toronto reported it had “crossed an unidentified flying object, round in shape, flying at an approximate speed of 300kts,” or more than 550 km/h. Over 8,000 feet above Lake Ontario on Nov. 14 of that year, two crew members were injured when a Porter Airlines plane dove to avoid hitting an “object” that “appeared to be solid… and shaped like an upright doughnut or inner tube.”
By combing through thousands of reports in a government flight incident database, VICE World News has uncovered dozens of recent UFO sightings from Canadian and international airlines.
They include a pair of WestJet flights near B.C.’s Okanagan Valley that allegedly saw “a bright, white strobe-type light” above them on the night of March 16, 2017, and a pre-dawn Jan. 10, 2015 encounter outside Regina, Saskatchewan, when “multiple aircraft reported a very large object with a small white light in the middle, surrounded by a halo” that “appeared to descend from above” 41,000 feet.
The sightings come from the Civil Aviation Daily Occurrence Report System (CADORS), a searchable digital archive operated by Transport Canada, the federal department that oversees road, rail, marine, and air transportation. With over three decades of data, CADORS contains nearly 300,000 aviation incident reports on everything from mechanical failures to rowdy passengers to bird strikes. It also provides a fascinating record of UFO sightings by professional aviators in Canadian airspace.
“Pilots are probably not reporting about 90 per cent of the things they’re seeing, because they know it could have lengthy career implications,” former Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) pilot John “Jock” Williams told VICE World News.
Williams is an aviation consultant, television commentator, and civilian pilot who spent 36 years in the Canadian military, including over two decades flying fighter jets. He also worked as a flight safety officer at Transport Canada for more than a dozen years.
“For most pilots, it’s not worth it,” Williams said. “That’s why I believe that each of these guys saw what they reported.”
Although brief, CADORS cases can still be enigmatic, such as a single-sentence entry from the morning of Oct. 21, 2005, when air traffic controllers “received reports from four (4) aircraft flight crews of a shiny, silver object over Toronto at roughly (30,000 feet), which turned sharply and moved rapidy [sic] to the southeast over Lake Ontario.” Many are scant on detail, like one from the night of Nov. 12, 2015, when an undisclosed flight 34,000 feet above Saskatchewan reported “a bright white light high above the aircraft and advised it was not a meteorite or other aircraft.” Very few explicitly use terms like “UFO,” such as a Qatar Airways flight south of Grande Prairie, Alberta, that “reported an unidentified flying object” in broad daylight on Dec. 18, 2016 in an account that offers no visual clues.
In a statement to VICE World News, a Transport Canada spokesperson said it is “not in a position to discuss individual aviators’ observations.”
“The events that are entered into CADORS are entered as they are reported to Transport Canada,” the spokesperson said. “Transport Canada endeavours to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the data contained within CADORS. However, the information within should be treated as preliminary, unsubstantiated, and subject to change.”
One case where information changed dramatically was the 2016 Porter event over Lake Ontario. An initial one-sentence entry in CADORS states the Nov. 14 morning flight from Ottawa to Toronto’s downtown island airport “reported ‘flying by’ an unidentified object, not likely a balloon.” But because two flight attendants were injured that day, the incident made a few headlines and prompted federal Transportation Safety Board (TSB) investigators to take a closer look.
Uploaded to CADORS on Nov. 29, 2016, the TSB report describes a doughnut-like object “approximately 5 to 8 feet in diameter” that was “directly ahead on their flight path.” But instead of just “flying by” it, the TSB revealed the “captain overrode the autopilot in order to quickly descend the aircraft under the object.” The plane’s two flight attendants, who “were in the process of securing the cabin for arrival… received minor injuries when they were thrown into the cabin structure.” None of the 54 passengers were hurt.
At the time, a TSB spokesperson stated, “The description and size of the object does not match any known commercial or consumer available unmanned aerial vehicle.” In an email to VICE World News, a current spokesperson confirmed, “TSB was not able to positively identify the object.” Porter—like Air Canada, WestJet, and others—declined to comment on specific reports.