Red Disk Passes a US Airways Jet
In 23 November 2003, near Over northern New Jersey, on descent into LaGuardia Airport, New York, a passenger flying into New York reported a single fast-moving red circular object that passed his airliner during descent. This case file covers what witnesses reported, the official narrative, and a two-pass assessment with its evidence tier.
What did witnesses see at Over northern New Jersey?
A passenger flying into New York reported a single fast-moving red circular object that passed his airliner during descent. By his own account he was aboard an "Embrajer-145, 50 seat jet, operated by US Airways Express, Chautauqua Airlines," inbound from Dayton, Ohio to LaGuardia, in a window seat on the left side of the aircraft. He places the time at "Approx. 2 P. M." on a "very clear day today, (11-23-03)" and says the crew had told passengers they were running early on a tailwind, scheduled for 2:42 PM but now expecting roughly 2:15 PM, so by his estimate they were about fifteen minutes from landing and "somewhere over New Jersey."
In his words, while the jet was in a "slowing down mode" in the traffic flow, "I looked out the window... and I saw this red circular object pass to the side of us very quickly, then ascend with a lot of speed. It was traveling very fast, and what caught my eye was the shape." He describes it as "definitely circular and a bright reddish color," says he "did a double take and tried to see where it went but it disappeared from view rapidly," and stresses the unusual motion: "It also appeared to move in a very kind of I don't know how to describe it like, jerky type motion. Not the fluid way a normal airplane would travel."
He is explicit that he could not reconstruct the geometry of the encounter: "I cannot tell you if we turned away from the object or the object turned away from us, or some combination of the two, as my eyes were just fixed on the object." His first instinct was prosaic and shaped by the moment. Flying into post-9/11 New York, he wrote, "My first thought was military, thoughts racing as they do when you live in NYC post 9/11. Like maybe it was a flair or something that was shot." But on watching it for the brief seconds available, "it definitely seemed to be moving on its own power," and "the object did ascend rapidly in that jerky weird type of motion, as it passed us." He closes by underlining his own experience and his uncertainty: "I have been flying since I was a small child, I am now 36 yrs old, and I've never seen anything like that... the object I saw did not seem to behave like or look like any aircraft that I have ever seen. I am at a loss as to what I saw." No photograph, video, or sketch by the witness accompanies the account. He named no other passenger or crew member who saw it.
What is the official explanation?
There is no official narrative for this event, and that absence is the central fact of the case. No Federal Aviation Administration record, National Transportation Safety Board entry, air traffic control transcript, or airline incident report is known to exist that references a red circular object near a US Airways Express flight on the New York approach on 23 November 2003. The witness did not file with the airline or the FAA; he submitted his account directly to a UFO website, writing "I still do not know what I saw, and thought maybe you or someone on your site could shed some light on it."
The report also does not appear in the civilian databases that catalog this kind of sighting. A search of the National UFO Reporting Center databank for late November 2003 does not surface a New York or New Jersey report matching a red circular object seen from an airliner on descent to LaGuardia, and the case is absent from the Mutual UFO Network case files and from period UFO news catalogs such as Patrick Gross's 2003 chronology, whose November 2003 entries cover Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Argentina but nothing for the New York corridor on or around the 23rd. In practical terms the only place this case has ever lived is the UFO Casebook archive, where it was posted under the heading "New York-Bright Red, Circular Object Passes US Airways Jet" and signed only "J. A." The earliest preserved copy is the Internet Archive capture of 11 December 2003.
Two operational details in the account are at least internally consistent with the period. Chautauqua Airlines did operate fifty-seat Embraer ERJ-145 regional jets under the US Airways Express brand and maintained a crew base at LaGuardia in that era, so the "Embrajer-145... operated by US Airways Express, Chautauqua Airlines" framing is the kind of detail a real passenger on that route could state correctly. That consistency speaks to the witness having genuinely flown the route. It does not, on its own, document the object, because no operator log or controller ever recorded one.
What did the witnesses think it was?
The witness, identified only as "J. A.," presents himself as a credible aviation observer rather than a casual spotter. He stresses lifelong familiarity with flight, "I have been flying since I was a small child, I am now 36 yrs old," and frames the New York corridor as routine for him: "There are always many aircraft about in the NY corridor, so it's not uncommon to see different aircraft streaking by, below or to the side of you." His argument is essentially one of exclusion by experience. He had seen a great deal of normal air traffic, and this did not fit any of it: "I've never seen anything that shape in the air before, and from an airplane, I really got a pretty good look at it, unlike the view one would get from the ground."
He believed, after the fact, that the object was self-propelled and not ordnance or debris. He walked himself out of his own first guess, that it might be a flare or something launched, on the basis of the sustained, controlled-looking climb: "after following it with my eyes for the brief time I was able to, it definitely seemed to be moving on its own power." The features he keeps returning to are the bright red circular shape and the "jerky," non-fluid motion, which he sets against the smooth trajectory of conventional aircraft. He does not claim it was extraterrestrial. He claims only that it did not match anything in his experience and that he was "at a loss" to explain it.
There are no corroborating witnesses. The account names no fellow passenger, no flight attendant, and no member of the cockpit crew as having seen the object, and no second report from that flight has ever surfaced. That is a real limit on the case. A single uncorroborated observer, however experienced, cannot by himself establish what passed the aircraft. At the same time, nothing hostile or method-shown has ever been produced against him either. No estranged party, no debunker, and no analyst has shown that he fabricated or misperceived the event. The testimony stands exactly as he left it, sincere, specific, and alone.
Is the Red Disk Passes a US Airways Jet real? The two-pass assessment
Pass one, the ordinary readings. The strongest mundane candidate for a bright red circular object that streaks past and then climbs away is another aircraft or aircraft component seen at an oblique angle in the dense LaGuardia approach stream, where the witness himself says traffic is constantly "streaking by." Sun glint off a fuselage, a strobe or beacon, or the underside of a banking jet can read as a colored disk for the second or two the witness had. The witness's own inability to separate his aircraft's motion from the object's is important here, "I cannot tell you if we turned away from the object or the object turned away from us," because relative motion during the jet's own maneuvering can manufacture the impression of a thing darting and climbing when it is the observer's platform that is turning. A second ordinary reading is a daylight meteor or fragment of space debris. The Leonid shower was still active in the 3 November to 2 December window in 2003, and Leonids are fast and can flare red. The weakness there is that this was full daylight, sunset in New York that day was about 4:34 PM and the sighting was near 2 PM, so a meteor bright enough to catch the eye against a clear afternoon sky and then appear to climb would be unusual. A balloon, a bird, or a window reflection are all possible in principle and none can be excluded with the data available, which is the recurring problem with a single brief glimpse. A deliberate hoax is also on the table, since the account is anonymous and self-submitted with nothing to check, but no method, motive, or confession has ever been shown, so a hoax is asserted, not demonstrated.
Pass two, if the description is accurate. Taken at face value, an experienced flyer saw a self-luminous red disk overtake a regional jet at high speed, then ascend rapidly with abrupt, non-aerodynamic "jerky" motion, in clear daylight, near a major airport. That profile, a small circular object with no obvious wings or contrail performing sharp changes that the witness contrasts with the "fluid way a normal airplane would travel," is the classic shape of an unexplained aerial object reported by aircrew and passengers worldwide. If real as described, it is consistent with the broader pattern of fast, controlled, structured objects near commercial aircraft that remain officially unaccounted for.
The verdict is Unknown. This is not a Verified Unexplained case, because there is no authenticated material to verify, no photograph, no radar, no controller tape, and no official document, and there is no corroborating witness. It is not Disputed in the formal sense either, because no counter-explanation and no official finding was ever issued for it, so there is nothing concrete to dispute; the mundane readings above are open possibilities, not demonstrated solutions. What remains is a sincere, specific, internally consistent first-person account from a self-described lifelong flyer, standing entirely on its own testimony with no apparatus around it. That is the definition of the Unknown tier: no official narrative exists, and the case rests on a single witness whose report can neither be confirmed nor closed.
Sources
- web.archive.org/web/20031211023359/http://www.ufocasebook.com/reddiskairliner.html
- www.ufocasebook.com/reddiskairliner.html
- web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=ufocasebook.com/reddiskairliner.html&output=json
- aviation-safety.net/asndb/type/E145
- www.amsmeteors.org/meteor-showers/meteor-shower-calendar/
- www.sunrisesunsettime.org/north-america/united-states/new-york-city.htm
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