UFO? Kite? New Chinese military aircraft? Whatever it was last month, it’s still hovering in the news.
China’s state-run People’s Daily reported Sept. 13 (in its “Life & Culture” section) that air traffic controllers “observed with instruments” a UFO about 20 miles from Baotou, the largest city in Inner Mongolia, about 8 p.m. on Sept. 11.
Flights were diverted to a secondary airport and three flights were forced to circle to avoid “collisions,” a Baotou Airport spokeswoman said. Normal operations resumed after about an hour. The PD offered no details about the UFO.
Yesterday, the UFO reappeared — in the saucy British tabloid The Sun, renewing interest in the night lights over northeastern China. Accompanying a photo, The Sun wrote that a “major” airport “was forced to shut down to prevent packed passenger jets crashing into a UFO.” Without citing a source, the paper described the object as, quote, “flat and tubular” (a seeming oxymoron ) and wrote that it “hovered two miles from Bootee” (its transliteration of Baotou). “Astonished officials say it then zoomed in to circle the airport before suddenly vanishing,”.
Video shows nothing but an occasional blinking light. UFOs over China are becoming almost routine.
Last month’s report was the ninth in three months, with at least eight sightings reported in several provinces between late June and late July. One in July that briefly closed an airport in Hangzhou turned out to be part of a military test at a nearby air base. Another UFO was just jet contrails, and one other was a kite.
The blurry photo in The Sun looks suspiciously like the UFO that disrupted air traffic in Hangzhou for an hour the night of July 7. And the details of that incident also have a familiar, earthly ring.
