What appeared at first like an ordinary night-time flight quickly turned into an extraordinary experience for the crew of a British passenger jet crossing southern Germany in July 2024.
As the aircraft cruised over Mühldorf am Inn, roughly 70 kilometres east of Munich, the pilots noticed an intensely bright light hanging motionless above the horizon.
“It wasn’t a star, and it certainly wasn’t another plane,” one of them later told researchers. “I grabbed my phone and started recording.”
The brief clip, now in the hands of scientists at the University of Würzburg, shows a distant, radiant object surrounded by smaller lights, slowly moving across the sky before accelerating past the aircraft.
Experienced pilots left baffled
Both pilots are seasoned professionals — one with fifteen years of flight experience, the other with more than a decade. They insist they could clearly rule out any conventional explanation:
“We’ve seen meteors, satellites, aircraft of every kind,” the captain said. “But nothing behaved like this.”
After roughly twenty minutes the light began to move, passing to the right and slightly above their jet, at an altitude the crew estimated to be over 12 kilometres (40 000 ft).
“It appeared as a cluster of brilliant points with no visible structure,” the pilot added. “It was truly the strangest sight either of us has ever witnessed.”
From cockpit video to scientific analysis
The recording was later presented at the 5th SETI/UAP Conference held at the University of Würzburg by Dr Douglas J. Buettner, a physicist and aerospace engineer from the University of Utah.
Dr Buettner, who has over 30 years of experience working on space-systems projects for NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, analysed the footage frame by frame.
Using Flightradar24 and other flight-tracking databases, he and German journalist Andreas Müller (editor of GreWi.de) ruled out the presence of any registered aircraft, helicopter or drone within the vicinity of the event.
Their conclusion: the object’s flight path and luminosity did not match any known natural or man-made aerial phenomenon recorded that night.
Germany’s new UAP reporting system
The case gained additional attention because it coincides with a recent initiative by the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Extraterrestrial Studies (IFEX) at Würzburg University.
Led by Professor Hakan Kayal, IFEX has become Europe’s only academic institution to integrate UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena) research into its aerospace-technology curriculum.
In co-operation with the German Federal Aviation Authority (LBA), the centre launched the nation’s first official UAP reporting portal, allowing professional pilots to submit sighting data directly to scientists for evaluation.
According to Professor Kayal, such reports are essential: “Reliable observations from trained flight crews help us distinguish genuine anomalies from misinterpretations of known phenomena. Science needs data, not belief.”
Historical echoes of wartime “Foo Fighters”
The Würzburg scientists note that this is not the first time pilots over Germany have reported mysterious lights.
During World War II, Allied bomber crews described being followed by glowing spheres they called “Foo Fighters” — objects that exhibited intelligent-like movements but left no radar signature.
Decades later, despite advances in satellite monitoring and air-traffic control, similar cases continue to surface.
Bavaria among Germany’s top UFO regions
Data from the Central UFO Reporting Office (CENAP) show that Germany recorded 1 106 UFO reports in 2024, compared to 807 the previous year.
Bavaria ranked fourth, with 130 sightings, behind North Rhine-Westphalia (177), Baden-Württemberg (154) and Hesse (140).
While the vast majority can eventually be explained as misidentified aircraft, satellites or meteorological events, around five percent remain unexplained — and the Mühldorf case is one of them.
Experts call for scientific transparency
Researchers emphasize that credible documentation and transparent data sharing are the only way to move the UAP debate from speculation to science.
Dr Buettner concludes: “The footage doesn’t prove extraterrestrial technology — but it reminds us that our skies still hold mysteries we can’t yet explain.”
For now, the pilots’ statement and their short video remain under scientific review. Whether the light was a rare atmospheric event, an unknown technological test, or something else entirely — the question remains open.
