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I’m a Boeing 747 pilot & see UFOs all the time – I filmed mystery orbs following me for 2,000 miles…nothing was on radar
Watch the incredible moment a mystery bright orb appeared during one of his flights
A BOEING 747 pilot who spotted several white UFO orbs has claimed they followed him for more than 2,000 miles.
Captain Ruud Van Pangemanan, 52, who has more than 30 years experience, was flying from Saudi Arabia to Nigeria when he spotted the mystery objects hovering next to his plane over Egypt.
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The Indonesian pilot claimed the bright orbs would move around in several directions - and in different formations.
The captain said he saw the same lights on more than one occasion on the Saudi-Nigeria route with Nigerian airline MaxAir.
Captain Pangemanan would mostly see between one and three orbs - but he would sometimes spot as many as five orbs at once.
The UFOs would often appear in the same place, he said, usually somewhere in the Sahara desert between Egypt and Libya.
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And they could be seen next to his plane until his landing in Nigeria - some 3000 kilometres away.
He told The Sun: "I've seen them since my first flight in June. They followed us from 11pm to the morning all the way until we landed.
"At first we were a little bit terrified thinking 'what is that? why are they coming to us and it's not on our radar?'
"But they kept on dancing, going up and down and flashing, making formations.
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"And after a while, when I would sometimes feel sleepy during the night, my co-pilot and I would try and look for them.
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He continued: "They stopped being scary, they made us happy and became some sort of entertainment during the flight.
"It's like they are showing us something nice."
Captain Pangemanan and his co-pilot would then try to figure out what the bright UFOs could be - from drones to even one of Elon Musk's Starlink satellites.
He said: "We were just curious, thinking it could be a satellite or maybe a drone or stars.
"My co-pilot has experience flying over Afghanistan and was almost hit by drones once, so he said it couldn't be one as it would not fly high like that.
"It could have been a Starlink satellite but satellites are not coming up and down or moving left to right."
They kept on dancing, going up and down and flashing, making formations
Captain Ruud Van Pangemanan
Captain Pangemanan tried to investigate the mysterious orbs - but when contacting air traffic control towers in Cairo, officials told him there was nothing on their radar.
An incredible cockpit video on his YouTube channel showed the moment the white orbs appear mid flight.
Captain Pangemanan and his co-pilot could be heard saying "it's very bright" as they wondered what it could be.
The video ends with the captain saying: "This is my experience of seeing something strange or UFO.
"What we see is still a mystery.
"Before that, we thought it was a light plane but it wasn't on our radar.
"We thought maybe it was a star but the stars didn't move.
"The UFO light shone for a long time and moved."
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He added: "The light moved freely. Sometimes forward, backward, left to right and vice versa.
In the video caption, he said: "30 minutes later we have some company.
"We were intercepted by UFO… yes it's a UFO.
"We thought that it was an aircraft, but that does not show on the radar.
"Then we thought they were drones, but drones also have to use radar and they don't use lights."
The strange sky-high encounter went viral on social media, but some users seemed a bit sceptical of it.
One person said on Reddit: "As an airline pilot we see these lights just about every late night/early morning flight we do.
"I remember being just as amazed and also have video/pictures just like this.
"They always appear over the same part of the sky depending on the time and direction we are flying.
"They start faint and get brighter with various levels of intensity, sometimes moving, sometimes stationary and sometimes in groups.
"They have to be Starlink satellites catching the sun briefly as they orbit as they appear at higher latitudes."
Another added: "These appear to show all the signs of being flaring Starlink satellites."
UFOs have always been a highly stigmatised topic, frequently considered as little more than conspiracy ideas or something for nuts.
However, in recent years, the discourse has shifted, with even the US government admitting that there are objects in the sky that it cannot or will not openly name.
The subject even got a new name: UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon).
MYSTERY MACHINES
A fellow Boeing 747 captain with some 9,500 hours of flight time at controls also told of his bizarre encounters with UFOs while taking to the skies.
Christiaan van Heijst explained that he has seen UFOs that appear to exceed all known technology, reaching hypersonic speeds of up to 23,000 mph.
The 39-year-old from The Netherlands is a respected airman and an award-winning aerial photographer, yet he has witnessed things he cannot explain.
And with former US military pilots coming forward to tell about their own unexplained experiences, that piqued the interest of Christiaan.
He previously told The Sun: "I realised that what they described sounded very much like some of the strange things I have seen years before.
"I always thought it was some 'military stuff' I had seen, but now it was possibly something else entirely that even stunned some of the best US military pilots on record."
For Christiaan, one of his most compelling and strange sightings was over Greece as he was flying near USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier and her strike group.
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He was flying a Fokker 50 at the time and witnessed a bright light appear at an extremely high altitude - moving at an approximate speed of up to Mach 30 (23,000mph).
"No known physics can describe what that light/thing did, for as far as I know. It left no trail or anything like it, just instant speed and poof… gone," Christiaan said.
Why are UFOs now a political issue?
FOR decades, UFOs and aliens were considered to be make belief things created by people in tinfoil hats but they are now considered a threat to national security.
Long gone are those who claim conspiracy theories are all false as many are now discussed at the highest levels of government with US officials even admitting their existence.
As more and more credible witnesses continue to come forward to tell their extraordinary stories publicly.
The 2010s saw decades of stigmas around extra terrestrial life start to break down as politicians made UFO sightings a matter of national security.
Across the world, governments have also unveiled some spooky truths with some even showcasing "dead alien corpses" on display for congress.
Researchers recently verified the legitimacy of a set of three-fingered mummies as potential evidence of "non-human" life forms.
A line-up of doctors confirmed at Mexico's Congress on Tuesday that the bodies, purportedly not of this Earth, were in fact real, once-living organisms.
The Pentagon also released a blockbuster 1,574 pages of real-life X-Files in 2022, related to its secretive UFO programme.
The haul includes reports into research on the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans, sets out categorisations for paranormal experiences, and studies into sci-fi-style tech.
Top UFO chief Sean Kirkpatrick told the world last year that he is set to step down from his job following his stern warning of concerning activity "in our backyard."
The Pentagon's UFO analysis office launched a UFO reporting service to the public after admitting to uncovering "some things" and calling the high number of suspicious activity either a foreign power or aliens.
Navy jet footage has revealed the intriguing images of a government-confirmed UFO baffling the internet.
The United States Government launched the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs).