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| Was it an extra terrestrial event? | | |
BL KAK
NEW DELHI, MARCH 6
India "Fireball" mystery has deepened, with no convincing answer or finding coming from experts and specialists. Officials of Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) are confronted with two questions: Was it an extra terrestrial event? Or was it a meteor shower? The DGCA specialists are baffled over a strage ocurrence in midair in the dead of the night recently.
Pilots of at least 10 aircraft flying over India reported, at around the same time, that a "ball of fire" emerged in the sky from nowhere and blasted off immediately, leaving a blazing trail in the sky, some 40,000 feet up in the air. A British Airways pilot flying his aircraft over India immediately reported the incident to the air traffic control (ATC) in Delhi, fearing an air mishap.
Pilots of the other aircraft flying on various designated routes, who all witnessed the "fireball" at around 1.45am, earmarked the location as some 300 nautical miles south-west of Delhi, somewhere over the State of Gujarat, or above the Arabian Sea, well within the Indian territory. The ATC immediately issued an alert to airports, but nothing could be ascertained.
Meanwhile, the DGCA has set up an enquiry into the incident and a report is awaited as to whether it was a "meteor fireball" or something else. The DGCA has asked ATC in Delhi to carry out preliminary investigations. Reports quoting DGCA officials said the "fireball" reports came in mostly from pilots of international aircraft, such as the British Airways, Air France and Malaysian Airlines.
A non-scheduled high-speed jet flying at the same time is also said to have given a similar report. However, an Air Sahara flight on the Delhi-Mumbai domestic route also reported the incident to the ATC. But what baffled the ATC is that none of the aircraft flying over India at the time went missing.
As per the description used by the pilots, the fireball appeared like a "bright burning object, orange in colour and scattered". "Oh! My God!", one pilot is reported to have shouted on seeing the fireball. Another pilot said it looked like a "meteor shower'', but nothing could be said with surity. Meteorological Department, however, has not noticed any such shower. Also, the ATC radar did not pick up any unusual signal, nor has there been any report of some object/s falling on the ground.
The DGCA believes it is bizarre for so many pilots to file similar reports. This indicates that the pilots did actually see something extraordinary in the sky. Speculation is also rife in some quarters if the incident has something to do with Pakistan's short-range missile test, which was conducted at around the same time. Pakistan had given a notice to Indian airmen of the test, but the exact time was not notified, said reports. |
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