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The story underneath has been published by the newspaper Ha'aretz, Israel, on July 5, 2002. Comments are provided underneath.
The pilot of an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Moscow reported seeing a surface-to-air missile explosion as he flew over Ukraine on Thursday, Israel's transport minister said on Friday. The report - officially denied by Ukrainian sources - seemed to be confirmed by the pilot of a Ukrainian plane who also reported seeing a flash in the sky.
Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh said the Israeli plane was never in danger and voiced doubt it had come under attack.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had not conducted any missile launches since accidentally downing a Russian airliner on a flight last October from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk in Siberia, killing 78 passengers and crew.
Sneh said he had spoken at length with the El Al pilot, whom he described as an experienced combat veteran of the Israeli air force.
"There is no doubt that he saw a missile that exploded in the air, apparently far from the plane," Sneh told Army Radio. "Circumstances suggest it was not launched at the El Al plane."
Reports of the purported missile launch followed an attack at an El Al counter at Los Angeles airport in which a gunman killed two people before security guards shot him dead.
The Ukrainian government said the military had not fired a missile. "At that time there was no military training with shooting in Ukraine," Defense Ministry spokesman Kostiantyn Khivrenko said. "Nobody shot even from cannons and automatic rifles, not only in that direction, but in all Ukraine."
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma said that since an errant missile shot down a Sibir Airlines plan over his country on Oct 4, killing all 78 passengers, most of them immigrants to Israel, "all missile exercises in Ukraine have been banned." Kuchma was speaking during a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark.
Amos Shapira, El Al's managing director, told Army Radio: "The pilot saw a flash... It was at least 10 to 100 miles (16 to 160 km) away. The plane was in no danger."
The newsbrief was reported by the Farshores UFO news portal, which subsequently received and published the following comment:
Dear Sir,
Regarding the incident with El Al flight on July 4, 2002 associated with "missile/flash" over Ukraine, I would like to attract your attention that there could be natural explanation for this.
1) a meteoroidal bolide, if the trajectory was downwards; 2) a little known and poorly understood geophysical phenomenon which I investigate for number of years and prefer to call it a "geophysical meteor". It looks like a large high speed ball-lightning, and can produce bright flash. You can read about it in English (including my letter published in AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY a few years ago) in: http://www.geocities.com/olkhov/awst1.htm or a copy: http://olkhov.narod.ru/awst1.htm.
Unfortunately, I have limited geophysical (meteorological) data associated with the event (also no exact time, no exact position), but what I have seems to be favourable for appearence of such phenomenon.
But of course, it is a preliminary thought - for more solid conclusion I need detailed description of the event and geophysical data from the region of the event +- 24 hours around the time of the event.
Sincerely,
Andrei Ol´khovatov, PhD
Russia, Moscow
www.geocities.com/olkhov
I see no reason to associate this event with the UFO phenomenon except in the sense that what the pilot reported is not given a consensual explanation. By that I mean that the pilots reported a missile, Farshore reports the article in a UFOlogical context (which is not a problem in itself, Farshore makes no claim as to the nature of the phenomenon but accurately provides the information as is), military speakers excluded a missile, a Russian academic proposes a possible meteor creating a plasma effect when entering the atmosphere: in that sense, three different explanation seem to be proposed, so the phenomenon is not identified.
I understand that the witnesses are the experienced pilots and that their testimony is not considered accurate by other parties: the pilots state that they saw "a surface-to-air missile explosion," and not an extraterrestrial spacecraft, nor a meteor, neither anything else.
I understand that in the context, no military authority would ever acknowledge that a missile was shot: there has been a recent incident seemingly of that sort that cost many lives.
I see a problem with the plasmoïd meteor possible explanation: the pilots do report a surface to air missile, which would somehow indicate that they saw the phenomenon coming upwards, not downwords or nearly horizontal. Unfortunately, the newspaper article even fails to indicate if the pilots have indeed seen the rise of the object or if they only saw its explosion. This is unfortunate because it is the key point. Of course a streak of light may be something else than a missile, but in that case we do not know that the pilots reported only a streak of light.
I have a strong agreement with Dr. Andrei Ol´khovatov: the provided data is insufficient for any definite conclusion whatsoever. This is unsurprising, as what we have here is a newspaper report and not the pilots original report which would very likely be of much higher interest and may allow a definite conclusion.
In the absence of any additional data, my guess is that the pilots have seen a surface to air missile explosion.
Concerning atmospheric plasmoïds, I recommend:
UFOs - An International Scientific Problem, Paper Presented at the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute Astronautics Symposium, Montreal, Canada, March 12, 1968, James E. McDonald, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona.
