Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Mystery Object Over Las Vegas

What follows is the opening paragraph of Tyler Rogoway's 3-17-19 TheDrive.com article entitled "Air Controller Wowed By Pilot's Ability To See Mystery Object Over Las Vegas With Night Vision":

"Around 9pm local time on Saturday, March 16th, 2019, an air ambulance helicopter was flying roughly 15 miles west of central Last Vegas when something odd caught his aided eye. During an exchange with an air traffic controller, the pilot of Mercy Air 21, an Agusta 119 Koala helicopter, noted spotting an unidentified object some distance from his position and only he was likely able to see it in the darkness as he was wearing night vision goggles (NVGs). The controller responded that he had nothing on radar in the area where he was seeing the object, but when he heard the pilot could only see it through his NVGs, he responded with amazement." 

Skipping down to the end of the article:

"We can also positively ID the helicopter. It is an Agusta A109, registered N238AM, belonging to Air Methods. We also now have better positioning information. According to this, MA021 would have been roughly nine miles from the South Hills Hospital, the approximate area where the pilot thought the object was flying over at 7,000 feet, when the radio exchange occurred.

"A nine mile visual ID of a party balloon or something like that at night using NVGs seems really questionable. So size of the object and its exact configuration is the big question at this point. We also know that the A109 was flying at 7,000 feet. So, the pilot would have seen this object at eye level from his perspective.


"Update: March 18th, 2019 @ 6:19pm PST—

"We finally talked to the Mercy Air operations base where the helicopter flies out of and they informed us that Air Methods headquarters has told them not provide comment or access to the pilot who was talking on the radio and spotted the object. They told us Air Methods wants any inquiries sent to their headquarters. The problem is that I had reached out to them and have heard nothing back in well over 24 hours. I will keep trying to contact them directly, but at this point it looks as if they are actively trying to avoid discussing the event with us."


Read Rogoway's entire article HERE.

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