Faucett DC-4 encounter (Piura–Lima, 1967)

The Faucett DC-4 encounter is one of the better-documented airliner UFO reports from Peru, though its documentation is largely secondhand. It is cited mainly for the number of witnesses and the military's reported handling of the case, not for physical evidence.

The flight and the sighting

On 2 February 1967 a Faucett DC-4 left Piura in northern Peru for Lima. About half an hour after takeoff, over Chiclayo, the commander, Oswaldo Sanvitti, reportedly saw a luminous object at roughly 7,000 feet. Accounts put the sighting in the early evening (about 18:30) and say it lasted about an hour. The aircraft carried seven crew and 52 passengers.

The main published account, by ufology archivist Patrick Gross, describes an object that was conical, with a widest part of about 230 feet (roughly 70 metres). It is said to have shown colored flashes and to have moved in rapid vertical jumps. Gross says the radio went silent and the cabin lights dimmed while the object was close, and both returned after it withdrew. A second, identical object later joined the first, and both then left at high speed. The captain reportedly believed the objects reacted to his radio call to the control tower.

Contemporary press

The event was reported in the French daily Le Provençal on 6 February 1967, four days after the flight. The article describes a cone-shaped craft that approached to about two miles, changed color, and was joined by a second object above the tail before both "disappeared at a supersonic speed." It says the object was about 70 metres across, which matches the figure in Gross's account. The article names no individuals, gives no clock times, and reports no official comment. It does not name the airline, so the attribution to Faucett depends on later compilations.

Witnesses, film and official handling

Gross names several passengers: a Peruvian army colonel, Alberto Rosell; the newspaper editor Elmer Nunez, who later likened the object to a spinning top; and a university engineering professor, Jorge Santa María Calderón. He also names the director of Lima's airport, Edwin Boris, as a ground observer who could not raise the aircraft by radio. According to the account, several passengers photographed the object. After landing, military personnel questioned the crew and passengers and confiscated their film. One passenger who asked to remain anonymous kept his film, which contains a single photograph reproduced on the Gross page without further provenance.

Spanish-language reporting, which I could not fully access, reportedly says the crew was pressured to discredit the sighting. That claim rests on a single source and should be treated as unverified.

Assessment and confusions

The case has no flight logs, radar tracks, or released military file in the sources reviewed. The main account cites a 1998 article by Antonio Huneeus in Unsolved UFO Sightings, and the rest of the detail appears to derive from that tradition. Several details differ between sources: the time (one compilation gives midnight), and the spelling of the airline and captain.

Two other events are easy to confuse with this one. A separate Faucett DC-4 crashed in the Cordillera de Carpish on 8 December 1967, killing all 72 people aboard, and a 1980 online account describes a similar Faucett DC-4 encounter with 58 passengers. The 1980 date is not corroborated and is probably a conflation. Because of the lack of primary records, the case remains contested. Its significance lies in the number of witnesses and the reported military seizure of the films, which are not independently verified.