EUGENE, Ore. – It’s making the rounds on Reddit, TikTok and YouTube: Air traffic control calls from several pilots – including at least one confirmed commercial pilot – report an unidentified flying object.

The alleged sightings occurred between Saturday and Sunday, with all pilots reporting mysterious flying objects and lights over Eugene.

LiveATC.net, which broadcasts air traffic control broadcasts, published the audio recordings of these pilots before they surfaced on YouTube and Reddit.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement about the sightings on Wednesday, saying: “A pilot reported seeing unfamiliar lights while flying in Seattle Air Route Traffic Control Center airspace on Saturday, December 7.”

However, when asked by our newsroom, the FAA did not confirm the authenticity of the audio recordings shared on social media.

According to the audio recordings, the object was detected by air traffic control collision avoidance systems and ATC was able to tell a pilot that there was no military activity in the area.

At 8:39 p.m. Saturday, a United Airlines pilot spoke on the broadcast: “Yes, just west of Eugene. I mean, it’s – we see three or four targets. They’re all up and down, that’s pretty crazy,” said the pilot of United Flight 1596.

The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) also received a report from another pilot who overheard chatter over air traffic control channels as he landed.

The pilot noted that the sightings were reported over Eugene around 8:40 p.m. Saturday.

Not long after, a pilot from a medical evacuation plane called: “Just at 1 p.m., another plane appeared at about 1,000 feet, flew toward us and then back out toward the ocean,” said the pilot, tail number N661LF. “It’s red in color, um, it’s moving at extreme speeds. I don’t even know how to describe how it moves.”

At some point, air traffic control instructed the pilot to do everything possible to avoid a collision.

“Medevac 1LF Roger. You have permission to maneuver left and right as necessary to avoid the UFO out there.”

The UFO Reporting Center said sightings like this are common but are unlikely to involve extraterrestrial aircraft.

According to Christian Stepien, the center’s chief technology officer, it’s more like SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation.

“It’s a series of really bright lights that fly over you in a perfectly straight line, and most pilots know what that is,” Stepien said. “When the satellites get where they want to go – to get into their final orbits – they start moving and performing maneuvers. And they can move in triangle formations; they can move back and forth, they can do patterns, etc. “They can look really bizarre, and a lot of pilots aren’t familiar with that.”

Stepien says Starlink satellites go high in the sky and many pilots report the satellites as UFOs.

Horizon Airlines pilots are also said to have reported the same sighting.

In its newly released annual report on unidentified anomalous phenomena, the Department of Defense says it received 1,652 reports between May 1, 2023 and June 1, 2024.

The unclassified version of the report can be found at https://media.defense.gov/2024/Nov/14/2003583603/-1/-1/0/FY24-CONSOLIDATED-ANNUAL-REPORT-ON-UAP-508. PDF.