Chile Airliner Sighting 2018 (Six Commercial Flights)

Background

The Chilean Dirección General de Aeronáutica Civil (DGAC) hosts the CEFAA (Centro de Estudios de Fenómenos Aéreos Anómalos), a small committee that collects reports of unexplained aerial phenomena in Chilean airspace. Its existence and mandate are public, and it has published some case material, including a 2014 image of a disc-shaped object that it logged as an unidentified aerial phenomenon. The 2018 episode is one of the more widely reported airline encounters handled through that channel.

The sighting

According to Spanish-language press, the pilots of six commercial flights, five operated by LATAM (then LAN Chile) and one by Copa Airlines, reported unidentified lights around the Livor control point, roughly 380 km from Antofagasta. The sighting is dated to 7 May; the press coverage appeared in October 2018, and the year is inferred from that coverage rather than stated in every article.

The most detailed account comes from the Copa crew. The pilot reported three lights to the left of the aircraft whose brightness changed, and said the crew would turn right because the lights appeared to be approaching. He later described "tres luces en forma de triángulo" (three triangle-shaped lights). A LATAM crew reported a very small light near sea level that appeared and then vanished. One flight reportedly diverted about 20 to 30 miles to keep its distance.

Semana reported that the phenomenon lasted more than half an hour and published cockpit audio. The outlet also cited the Chilean group Ceifac (Centro de Investigación de Fenómenos Anómalos de Chile), which released the recordings and argued that a boat-light refraction explanation did not fit, because the lights moved deliberately and formed a shape, whereas a reflection would have stayed still.

Official response

CNN Chile reported that the DGAC was investigating the lights and that the CEFAA director, Hugo Camus, confirmed the pilots' reports. Chilevisión noted that the CEFAA had not released a report at the time, and that the objects remained unidentified. I found no later official CEFAA or Chilean Air Force conclusion in the sources available, so the case has no published explanation.

Assessment

The case is notable because several professional crews reported it independently, the reports went through an official aviation body, and the communication was recorded. Its weaknesses are equally clear: the reports are known mainly from press summaries and from the publicising group's recordings; sources disagree on the number of lights, the exact location, and the precise date; and the authorities did not publish a finding. Lights seen from the air at night over the ocean have many mundane causes, including vessels, flares, and reflections, and none of these has been excluded in a public document. The case is best treated as a documented but unresolved sighting, not as evidence of a non-human craft.