Unknown over Burbank, CA
A witness account on file, unevaluated. Most of the archive rests here, and honestly so.
The report, as filed
3 incredibly bright amber lights seen over Burbank,CA on Christmas night 2007.
Held as-reported from National UFO Reporting Center. Witness text is preserved verbatim, including its spelling; nothing is edited beyond formatting.
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Routed to: Federal Aviation Administration · records window 2007-12-22 → 2008-01-08
From the same sky
Related entries
November 9, 2022 · 9:15 PM · TRIANGLE
Burbank, CA
Approximately 11/12/2022 +- 3 days, about 9:00 to 10:00 p.m. on a moonless night, very clear sky, I was walking my horse traveling W to E in Burbank. I had an unobstructed view to the SE and S and saw aircraft lights similar to those of the numerous helicopters which routinely use a flight path coming from Glendale/Los Angeles around the eastern limit of the Santa Monica Mountains and south of the southern limit of the Verdugo Mountains, through the pass between them, into the San Fernando Valley to travel to either Burbank Airport or Van Nuys Airport or other locations in the SFV. There are routinely about half a dozen such aircraft I see every night about that time. They move quickly and noisily across the Valley. These are small planes, many helicopters, all flying low and a few more distant, much higher passenger planes from Burbank Airport or LAX. The helicopters and small planes all make motor noise that is easily noticeable. Last night I counted 6-7 aircraft in my normal 20 minutes walking my horse. On the night I saw a very unusual aircraft, I had no cell phone with me so far as I can recall. I routinely carry one on these walks but I believe I left it behind because it was uncharged. Even if I had one, it would have captured only the running lights, not the body of the craft. There was no light from the ground up toward the sky that illuminated the body at all. Coming toward my area of the Valley from the Glendale area to my SE, I noticed lights which I took to be a helicopter coming from the usual route over west Glendale along the I-5 and then bearing slightly west following the 134 freeway into the SF Valley. The lights appeared to be somewhat higher than most helicopters. The lights looked a little different and weren't flashing with the same rapidity of most helicopters. It drew my attention. I noticed that its speed was different as well, it seemed to take longer to get into the Valley and to get closer to me than normal aircraft. I halted my horse, which is very unusual since I am exercising him, not just getting some casual recreation, to observe this aircraft. As it got slowly closer to me, when I can normally hear helicopters, I realized I still could not hear it. It seemed to be moving toward my general location with a moderate speed unlike more rapid helicopters or small private planes. There seemed to be no urgency about it. That was very unusual. Other aircraft seem to have a specific purpose to their flight. This one did not give me that impression. I believe I noticed that it was not lit with running lights in the front. I noticed lights on the sides and the rear. As it got closer, I could see that it was much larger than a helicopter, that it had a wingspan and that it was essentially invisible due to having no color. It began to look like a blacked out and very large plane. It appeared to be much higher than helicopters and small planes and I noticed that there were no other aircraft in the sky above me or to the south and east. There was no other helicopter noise behind me. The sky was essentially silent and free of aircraft except this one. As it got well into this corner of Valley, it seemed to bear slightly to the west, following the 134 freeway, running along the north edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. Because of the altitude, it was difficult for me to determine whether it was actually over or north of the Santa Monica Mountains, but I decided it was actually over the Valley and close to being more closely above me. About this time, several minutes into following its steady and still silent flight path, I was able to identify the triangular shape of the aircraft. This was difficult at first because it was black against a dark sky. It almost was like a hole in the sky, but the rear lights and wingtip lights gave it some dimension. They were not bright lights, they were subdued, which caught my attention. I do not recall the colors. I believe they were white and red, but I'm not positive about that. As the now apparent shape of the plane was closer, I could see it was high, not nearly at passenger jet levels of 30,000 or 35,000 feet, but much higher than helicopters. I could also see that the angle of the nose was close to a 90 degree, nearly a right angle, shape, not swept back sharply like many modern planes. The wing angles were difficult to be sure of, but appeared to be perhaps 45 degree angles. I could see no rear wing edge cut outs, the rear edge of the triangle appeared to be straight across to the other tip. By now the size of the plane was becoming imposing. I would say intimidating. It was unlike the Stealth Bomber. Much larger, multiples of any single similar plane. The plane was still essentially silent, although I believe I heard a very low soft hum, unlike any motor or jet engine. I had never seen anything of this size in the sky before. It was very, very large, still moving at moderate speed. This surprised me and I started thinking that it was trying to avoid detection of its sound or speed, and how odd it was to try to fly across the SFV of all places, undetected. It seemed ridiculous. I started wondering whether the President was visiting Los Angeles and recalled him having been in San Diego very recently, and wondered if this was some new method to safely transport the President, and then realized that there was no way that this plane was designed to transport the President. I wondered briefly whether the plane was doing aerial photogrammetry because its flight was so steady, unswerving, almost relaxed. That also seemed ridiculous. I was quickly trying to figure out a logical reason for a massive plane like this to be flying over Los Angeles. As the plane passed my location, I continued following it and while it was generally still overhead, and somewhat south and west of my location, I was very surprised to see the single aircraft separate into 3 distinct identical, but smaller triangular aircraft. One continued on a direct course to the West, toward the far west end of the SFV, one seemed to ascend slightly and swung south in an arc with the wings tilted, up on the far side and of course, down on the tip closest to me, and it eventually disappeared from view over the Santa Monica Mountains. I could not tell whether it was above or beyond the 405 freeway to my west. The remaining section of the original craft looped more tightly toward the north and then swung east, reversing the original course, and flew back in generally the same flight path it had taken when entering the Valley. It got out of sight toward the east. I did not see it swing south toward Los Angeles or East Los Angeles. When the separation occurred, of course it was a stunning event and I wondered whether I had earlier actually been seeing from my low angle, three planes stacked in formation, appearing to be one, though separated and flying in close formation. I seriously considered that and determined that was impossible since I was now almost under the aircraft and had seen no separation in the aircraft as it approached me. I saw one aircraft and it separated in flight with no change in speed or direction into 3 component parts, all identical in shape, though smaller in size of course to make up the whole. I was unable at any time to see any vertical dimension to the aircraft. The blackness and limited warning lighting made me conclude these were U.S. military aircraft on a test flight. Obviously they were not alien craft; they had conventional though muted lighting just as we routinely use. I knew they were not foreign aircraft, flying discretely over Los Angeles. They were designed to be unseen, unheard, flying in a manner planned to not attract attention by ripping through the Los Angeles SFV at high speed, right over a major freeway that merges into the 101 freeway, both of which have massive traffic loads in both directions, not to mention all the residential and commercial areas with people outdoors walking their dogs if
June 5, 2022 · 9:30 PM · OVAL
Burbank, CA
Flat black oblong or possibly domed craft difficult to see against the night sky except the perimeter with several bright red lights flashing slowly and smaller green lights around the circumference. Circled a span of 3-4 city blocks about 5/6 times very low but not nearly as loud as you would expect for something flying so low. Then slowly moved off in a SouthEast direction.
October 4, 2021 · 8:21 PM · LIGHT
Burbank, CA
Was trying to take a video of a lightning storm from my backyard. A faint disk of light shoots from left to right. It disappears behind a cloud and then can barely be seen coming out the other side. A second very bright, larger light follows slightly lower in the sky shortly after. The lights aren’t drones and are not lightning. I’m not sure what they could be as they are very low in the sky and the view is partially obstructed by a tree.
July 4, 2021 · 4:30 AM · OTHER
Burbank, CA
At approximately 4:30 in the morning on July 4 and I walked out onto my second-story balcony that faces east to smoke a cigarette. I heard a humming noise coming from above so I looked up into the sky and saw an extremely large white craft flying west directly over my building. It had a flat bottom, slightly rounded sides, and white/blue/red lights on the craft. I immediately thought UFO mothership. I’ve never seen anything this large flying this low, and ran back inside to grab my phone. I was able to snap two photos and wanted to grab a video, but the craft flew over my building and out of sight before obtaining. It has bothered me ever since, not knowing whether there was some type of blimp (closest object I can relate the craft to) or truly some type of unknown aircraft flying over the city during those hours. I just can’t shake the image of this craft out of my mind since July 4. Even though it has been some time since my sighting I felt it was applica! ble to report.
March 1, 2021 · 4:15 PM · DISK
Burbank, CA
My student and I were performing a long cross country IFR flight. We departed our home airport, French Valley, to Santa Barbara airport. The type of aircraft we were flying is a Piper Archer. Estimated time of event was 16:15 Pacific time. Indicated altitude was approximately 6,100 ft MSL (Mean Sea Level). Indicated Airspeed was 105 KTS. Approximate position was over Van Nuys Airport/ Burbank Airport, 2 – 5 miles West of VNY VOR, on the V186. Heading 280 degrees, North West bound. Preceding the event, I remember ATC (Air Traffic Control) informing us of various aircraft around our present position. I was looking down at my iPad to look for any incoming traffic to maintain separation. As I looked at our position on the screen, there were multiple targets around our position that did not seem to be a factor as they were pretty far from our location. The alarming and confusing matter was that the Garmin 430’s TCAS (Traffic Collision Avoidance System) was going off giving me a collision alert. It was depicting a target -100 ft from our position at our 12 o’clock, and it was moving fast towards us, opposite direction. I began to panic as this is very close. My student pilot in the left seat yelled, “Oh My God”, and jerked the aircraft controls. From my point of view, I was sitting in the right seat, as I looked outside to search for this fast aircraft 100 ft below us I saw a dark gray metallic figure dip low and pass right underneath our left wing. It looked like it made that it made a last-minute maneuver to avoid us. visually it seemed closer to being within 50 ft. I was able to quickly glance at the object as it was to my left. This UFO looked closely like an oval, teardrop, or a tight dish-like shape, and very aerodynamic like. To me it looked like a mix between a fossilized trilobite with a smooth carapace, or flying manta-ray/turtle. The size of the object was approximately the size of a small jet like a Honda Jet or a very wide sports car. From my memory the top side of the object appeared to be made of metal as I saw metal plates that resembled closely to the top side of B2 bomber or a F-35 aircraft. I knew it was metal as I was able to see the sun reflecting it’s shine from the top of the object into my eyes. This event lasted less than 2 seconds and happened quickly. The object maneuvered incredibly fast. After the event, my student was terrified as she was asking me what had almost collided with our plane. I gave her my description of what I saw and she confirmed and said it looked more like a flying saucer. She was able have a closer look as she was closer to the object and had a better view of it. I look back down to my iPad to verify if it was still close by and the G430 and it was gone. My thoughts: The weird thing is that if this was a UFO made by a sophisticated intelligent life form outside of our known planet, it should not have a transponder or a signal that our technology should pick up. The other contradictory factor is that why would a military aircraft operate in close vicinity of congested airspace. The other factor is that a flying object like that with our present technology shouldn’t be capable of cruising at those high speeds. Even fast-moving large aircraft, such as B747, would appear to be moving slowly from the ground or in air. Did we feel the wake turbulence? No because we were above the UFO, and wing tip vortices sink towards the ground. It couldn’t have been a bird either or balloon either as the size was just far too large to match the profile of what we experience. We did not report our experience to ATC as we were very shocked from the event. Looking back at my track logs of Foreflight, there appears to be a good 3 minutes of my flight data missing during the approximate time of the event. ((NUFOC Note: We spoke at length via telephone with this witness, and we found him to be serious-minded. We suspect he is an excellent witness, and highly reliable. We are expecting to receive a supplementary report from the student pilot, as well. PD))
September 6, 2020 · 11:15 PM · SPHERE
Burbank, CA
From my second story balcony I witnessed a large metallic sphere appear over the horizon. It did appear to look shiny, but it was in a hazy sky. No sound or lights of any kind. It was moving at a constant height and speed . Hard to tell exactly, It appeared to be maybe 10-20 in size and roughly 2-300 feet above me. It flew directly over me going approx. 30 mph at a NW angle. I watched it as it went completely out of sight in the distance in a straight line.