The strange events began to unfold on Friday 9 November when a British Airways pilot called Shannon Airport Air Traffic Control and asked about the military exercise. She was flying to Montreal when she saw a "very bright light" that swept from the left side of the plane, and then quickly turned north. “It looks like he didn't want to collide,” the pilot said.
There was no military exercise at the time, but Air Traffic Control received another call from a Virgin Atlantic pilot describing "multiple objects following the same trajectory." The pilot said he saw "two bright lights" on the right side of the plane, after which he quickly retreated. He thought they could be meteors or objects returning to Earth's atmosphere.
Another pilot said the object's speed was "astronomical," "like Mach 2," that is, twice the speed of sound. Technically, this would make flying objects supersonic and much faster than conventional commercial aircraft, which tend to travel at Mach 0.64.
Officials have not yet revealed the nature of these UFOs, although the likelihood that these are "green men on a flying saucer" is extremely small. The Irish Aviation Administration said it has filed a report and will investigate the strange activity "as part of the normal process of investigating a confidential incident."
A spokesman for Shannon Airport said they would not comment on the incident until the investigation was over. But it is known that meteorological probes, drones and meteors are often mistaken for UFOs.