Strange Days... Indeed

Program #168 - News

A regular contributor to this program, Nick Balaskas, got back from Cuba on Thursday night, having spent just under a week on the island.

Nick reports that on Friday night, December 14th after leaving Pearson Airport in Toronto, during the first snowfall of the year, the Airbus 320 Skyservice plane - Flight SV524 was making a night approach to an airport near Cayo Coco, Cuba at around 6:30 p.m., local time.

Nick was startled when he heard the engines get louder and felt pushed down into his seat. This was shortly followed by a near weightless sensation. The Captain then announced that his instruments detected a false signal of another aircraft in the area and in the interest of safety he had taken evasive action.

Nick's final destination was the next stop, the airport near Manzanillo, Cuba, but all the passengers were asked to disembark at Cayo Coco so the aircraft could be cleaned for new passengers.

Nick spoke with a few of the waiting passengers, in the terminal building, who said they saw the plane "go around" after seeing a single red light fly low over the airport as Nick's flight was coming to land. The waiting passengers thought it may have been a small plane but could not explain why only a single red light was seen. Apart from Nick's plane, there were no others on the ground at that airport that night.

On re-boarding the plane, Nick told the flight attendant standing by the door next to the cockpit about the red light seen by the waiting passengers at the airport - in a loud enough voice so the pilots could also hear - the flight deck crew turned their heads in Nick's direction. The flight attendant suggested it may have been a UFO and said she would find out and get back to him. Nick never heard back from her.

Nick later told the passengers sitting next to him and who had experienced what he did, what he'd heard in the terminal building and they thought they would be more comfortable with the explanation of a near collision with a UFO than the thought of flying in an airplane with faulty instruments.

Nick is again out of town, spending Christmas with relatives and we've not been able to track him down to talk to him about his Cuban experience - doubtlessly we'll catch up with him in the New Year and get an update.